On 5 October 2022, Canonical announced that it was opening up its Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) for free to the general public. Before we get into this nitty-gritty, you need to understand a few things.
Back in 2004 Mark Shuttleworth released? Gave to the world? Ubuntu. An operating system based on Debian all of whom fall under the Linux umbrella an operating system for your computer. Yep, there are alternatives to the giant that is Microsoft. When Mark released Ubuntu, he did so through his company Canonical Ltd; now, this is a critical point that many of my contemporaries failed to understand or recognise. I well remember having huge arguments with people on a LUG mailing list when I stated: "You watch; once you're all hooked, you'll end up paying for that OS." OK, my prediction has yet to materialise, but there's plenty of time. 😉
Another Linux OS at the time was Red Hat. This, too, for a time, was 'free' in the sense that you had full access to all the updates etc. Now I need to be careful here because some folk will point out that it is perfectly feasible to run Red Hat these days mainly because it is GPL so humour me as I use Red Hat as a kind of mirror explanation as to what Canonical wanted to do. Red Hat moved to a business model whereby it offered, in the first instance, technical support for its operating system to customers for a price. Over the years, RH has expanded to cover many types of software support and provides numerous services, including the cloud, to name a few. Canonical has followed the same path regarding business support, although the main difference is they have always offered Ubuntu with support via the community. Now therein lies where a lot of users are confused as to a dirty word in the FOSS community, "Ownership". Ubuntu at one time had, I would argue, the largest community/Userbase within the Linux arena. The vast majority of those users "contributed" in one way or another to not only the operating system and associated programs but also in a whole host of other ways, including mailing lists and chat rooms. With all this work and free time given by the users, they felt and, in a lot of cases, still feel that "The Community" owns Ubuntu. They're wrong, and Mark has demonstrated that they are wrong a number of times over the years by simply implementing things that the vast majority opposed "Unity" for one springs to mind Ubuntu firmly belongs to both Mark and Canonical.
The FOSS community are a funny lot; they don't like being told what to do, and they certainly don't like people messing with their systems. Fast-forward to October 2022, and canonical has decided that it will open up its Pro edition and associated support services for free to the general public. Now with my Sales hat on, that makes perfect business sense. Get some people on board, and maybe in six months, you can convert them to an enterprise-grade support package.
The other day, I noticed this in an update
Setting up ubuntu-advantage-tools (27.11.2~22.04.1) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/ubuntu-advantage/help_data.yaml ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/ubuntu-advantage/uaclient.conf ...
"Hmm? Looks like Ubuntu-nee-Canonical is preparing my system should I want to take them up on their offer of Pro support?" now that's all well and good, but hang on a minute. It should be up to me if I want to make changes to that config file you just effectively dived in and edited my file! Now there will be those who will argue that by saying "Yes" to the implementation of an update, you are, in effect, agreeing to any changes those updates make. I would be forced to agree to the strict letter of the law, but in terms of open-source morals, I would argue that's not a change that would improve or affect the stability of my OS; it is merely an administrative change but OK, we'll let it slide while muttering under my breath. But then comes the thing everyone is up in arms about.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
Try Ubuntu Pro beta with a free personal subscription on up to 5 machines.
Learn more at https://ubuntu.com/pro
The following packages have been kept back: gstreamer1.0-pipewire libpipewire-0.3-0 libpipewire-0.3-common libpipewire-0.3-modules libspa-0.2-modules pipewire pipewire-bin
The following packages will be upgraded: libnfsidmap1
Hold on! They're not only messaging me through apt-get, but they are, in effect, trying to sell to me too! OK, you could argue, "Not sell - Promote." but it kinda amounts to the same thing in most Linux users' eyes.
Over the years, there have been numerous times when I've wondered what on earth goes on at Canonical? The decision-making is bizarre, to say the least. Hands up all those who remember the Ubuntu phone? Who releases a mobile phone with the idea you're going to take over the world and then promptly axe your music store and cloud storage service! Two of the major elements any self-respecting phone provider should have. Are they just amateurs there? I will say, in the early days, most of the employees came from the very same LUG I came from; if Mark had of asked me to join back then, I know I could have done a better sales job than the team he had.
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