Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced on Thursday that Ubuntu Linux bug #1 – "Microsoft has a majority market share" – is now officially closed. Rather than boasting about his victory, he gives much of the credit to iOS and Android. “Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.”
We use the term “victory” above very loosely since it’s quite clear Shuttleworth didn’t achieve his overarching goals of dominating the PC industry. Back in 2004 he believed pretty strongly that all PC’s should ship with primarily free and open operating systems, a goal which quite clearly hasn’t played out like he expected. Even Android phones for the most part ship with locked boot loaders, and OEM’s do everything possible to restrict access.
Despite the technicalities, Shuttleworth notes that the Microsoft of 2013 is nothing like the company he declared war on back in 2004. He writes that Microsoft Azure in particular is "a pleasure to work with" on Linux, and that today "circumstances have changed.”
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