They are the market leader in Enterprise Linux distributions, with more than a Billion $ (US) total revenue. I would think a very solid example that it is possible to make money with open source software (which other people also do, look at Novell, Digia, ...).

Red Hat, in contrary to Canonical, does all its developments together with the community, all under open source licenses and sponsors quite a bunch of projects with developers and money. They don't develop software secretly behind closed doors, like Canonical, they don't have to spread FUD over projects they don't want to use, like Canonical, they don't make developers to sign a CLA when they want to work on their projects, like Canonical. They are a true open source business. Unlike Canonical.

Clearly you have knowledge of his style. Such behaviour seems rather unacceptable. Don´t think for a moment that I worship him. It took him a while to see through the ANC. He alienated a lot of people for various reasons even here - his dating across the colour line being one of them. In SA then (and even now) it was not that acceptable. It is not only whites which often object to that. Yes, we have some baggage.

Very interesting.

Well, Ubuntu is much more like Window$ than like Linux. User and root privileges are very vague, common security practices are not present, there are plenty of annoying pop-ups, lots of bloat and programs that crash, lots of obfuscation what is going on under the hood, and now they have Amazon integrated search in the desktop search.

As for critical principles of *nix, well it's everything that makes Linux different from other OSs (including Window$, Mac, Ubuntu). A focus on security, stability, on programs that do one job very well, on ease of configuration and customizability, on transparency as opposed to obfuscation.

So basically, all of this make it right for him to tear down South African legislation so he can smuggle the rest of his money out of the country ? Two rights don't right a wrong, and he is definitely not benefiting the South African people by doing this.

I see a couple of issues here.

The discussion has moved from a money issue to a personal issue. Seriously did we need to know he dated across "racial lines"? I mean who gives a hoot who he dated and if they were green or from another planet. I do not see the relevance.
The discussion has moved from a legal rights issue to a business model issue. How did that happen? Maybe because people just can't get past the idea that he was successful and made plenty of money before he ventured into Ubuntu.
The discussion has been manipulated by individuals with a gripe. This gripe, as always, kinda take these discussions off topic and surprise surprise it is always the same people doing it.

So in keeping with the off topicness of this thread here's my 2 Drachmas (or 2 Shekels if you would prefer).

The comparisons between SA the IOM and the UK are not valid. The IOM is not and never has been (as far as I am aware) nor ever will be part of the UK. It is a British Crown Dependancy but it is not within the UK.

SA has its own system which its citizens have a perfect right to adhere to or to fight against. SA has a long history of this and the nation still bears the scars of this history. If Shuttleworth has made money while living abroad then I personally feel he has a right to do with it as he sees fit and the government of SA shouldn't interfer with it after the fact. If their laws are like the IOM then so be it but if they are not then chasing him for money that the law does not allow them to chase if for or changing the law retrospectively is wrong. However the money he made while living in SA should, in my very humble opinion, be subject to the laws of SA the exact same way that every other SA citizen's money is subject to those laws. I, unlike many, don't dislike the guy because he now uses a tax haven. Tax havens are around for a reason and that reason is because people like Shuttleworth are around to use them. Good luck to anyone with enough smarts to be able to make enough money to use one. Also many people don't realise that the IOM taxes income made not just in the IOM but anywhere in the world. If you use the IOM as a base (which Shuttleworth does) you pay tax on everything you earn regardless of where you earn it from. People who live there or base their business' there know and understand this. To a certain extent the British Government does the same thing, I know British teachers who work their holidays teaching in other countries and Britain takes taxes from those earnings. If you are part of the system you abide by the rules of the system. If you don't like those rules you challenge them just like Shuttleworth is doing.

As much as I dislike Ubuntu and Canonical I have to give credit where it is due and admit that without it the Linux world would probably still be in the same state it was in 2003 with regards to its user base. Canonical and Ubuntu brought Linux to the masses. Companies like RedHat did not, distros like Debian and Slackware did not but Ubuntu did. The problem with Canonical/Ubuntu and by extention Shuttleworth is their business model with Linux is not in any way shape or form open and free. Many good people who volunteered their time worked in the Ubuntu system helping Ubuntu/Canonical get to where it is and made their feelings known when Ubuntu/Canonical started losing its way. Some have stayed, many have left, only time will tell if Ubuntu/Canonical will change its methods. I seriously doubt it and that is my problem with the system that Shuttleworth has created.

Well actually this thread has moved from shuttle's/canonical ltd's tax situation to discussing why 'buntu and canonical ltd are worse than red hat, why their contributions are less and why their business model is all wrong, etc, etc...

(I have to agree fully with TobiSGD with regard to shuttle/canonical/buntu however... and lets not forget who it was that called red hat "proprietary"...)

This is the guy who used an "african" "humanity" type marketing scheme to market his repackaged Debian, yet he resents paying his fair share of taxes to his home country...

A serial tax dodger plain and simple. He left ZA for tax reasons, moved to UK and set up an operation on the isle of man for tax reasons... I doubt any country's tax laws would be lenient enough for this man.

Now despite exploiting a tax haven and being a multi-billionaire, he wants the 10% tax levy, on the close to R4.5 billion in assets he transferred out of the country back in 08/09, to be paid back... and is prepared to fsck with the ZA constitution to do it... but of course it's all in the interests of his fellow south africans...

Agreed.

I only described his business model and his contributions (or lack of them) to the OSS world as an answer to the claim that Shuttleworth would be some kind of open source charity.

We don't know that. Before Ubuntu was created companies like Suse (it was them who attracted me enough to buy a package of Suse Linux Professional back in the time) and Mandrake (later Mandriva) had exactly that as an aim, make Linux on the desktop a worthy comparison for the "average user". Who knows what would have happened if Ubuntu didn't appear, with a billionaire as sponsor and his humanitarian claims ([Ubuntu] is named after the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu, which can be translated as "humanity towards others" or "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity". Source: Wikipedia).

We can see where his humanity ends, when it comes to his money. Of course he should be allowed to use tax havens, as most rich people do. But he shouldn't be allowed to take down a constitution of a country for any amount of money.

Gees. This has turned into a hornet´s nest and I thought the issues were pretty straightforward and clear.

My main gripe was the 'financial refugee' term applied to S. He has done nothing illegal and it is an exaggeration to claim that his case will bring the country/constitution (whatever) down. Surely it is not too much to ask that guidelines be published and used when determining a R250 million penalty, that parliament should have a hand in its determination and that the Reserve Bank should be directly approachable (rather than having to do it through a bank which has very little interest in putting your views across). In addition in the SA legal system the very fact that a litigant is white puts him at a disadvantage. Race permeates everything. So, I doubt whether there is much need to worry about him succeeding in this case. At the most it amounts to a futile attempt to highlight a crooked system.

I also felt that more good would flow from allowing him to spend the R250 million himself. Admittedly I am a free marketeer and this might not appeal to those begging to be enslaved by governments. Still, there might be something to be said for keeping governments small and efficient.

As it is, he moved the last of his assets legally out of the country in 2010.

The reference to his former black date is general knowledge and was part of my suggestion that perhaps he is not everywhere seen as a saint - unlike Mandela, I guess.

I have too little knowledge of other Linux systems to contest the allegations that Ubuntu is foreign to the general Linux concept. Assuming that it is, I wonder whether it cannot be seen as an advance on that concept. At least HUD seems a good idea. I can understand that there are some negative feelings about S taking a open source OS and turning it into a financial quest. However, he would not be entitled to close that system - surely? Furthermore, the open source philosophy seems to run the risk that developers may well find that their efforts are hijacked by others for commercial gain. Surely any participation in an open source venture entails that risk and it seems rather futile to complain when the obvious happens?

I think more information is needed on why exactly he wants to do this, and what the implications would be. If he no longer has any money there, then why would he do it. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

It is not that Ubuntu would be really foreign to Linux concepts (after all Linux is what you make from it) and also not that Ubuntu does not advance the Linux desktop (some people like the Unity desktop, things like Jockey make it easier for the "average user" to install drivers, etc.). It is more like he treats the open source environment, especially in the last years (Ubuntu 10.04 seems to be a breakpoint, where Ubuntu's aim changed from "We make Linux for humans" to "We want to be the next Apple") what bothers people. If you want to inform yourself about that read up about the Mir/Wayland controversy, Canonical's Contributor License Agreement (which in fact enables Canonical to close down their projects at any given time), Canonical's attempt to leech the money from the Rythmbox music player, ... .
There are really plenty of points.

Also read this.

There is a long history of Canonical not being nice witht eh rest of the OSS community. Their license aggreement is atrocious in that if you sign it with any of your works, regardless of the GPL or any other OSS license, you lose all your rights to your own work and give all the rights to Canonical. It is clear that everything to do with Canonical is about money and not about sharing.

Wait a minute, the skies have not fallen in

I know why you did it, I was just pointing out how easy it was for this topic to go off topic so to speak. I actually agree with you.

Please don't quote wikipedia to me when you could have used something more authoritive. Suse may have attracted you and Mandrake may have had that as an aim (I still have Mandrake disks with kernel 2.2) but seriously as a desktop they were behind Windows and it wasn't until Ubuntu with all its "just works" philosophy that many people (like me) moved to Linux.

If that consitution is not fair or reasonable why shouldn't he? Seriously who else would have they means to do so? Certainly not someone living in Soweto.

Nothing is straight forward or clear when there are agendas to push.

So after 50 years the tables have turned and now some people are unhappy?

It may be general knowledge in SA, or indeed throughout the universe, but what is the relevance to that in this instance? You are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing me there is any.

Read the link I provided before, also understand Canonical's license agreement.

I have no agendas to push (if that is what is implied) except my own interest in mainly the legal aspects of the matter - and an irrational desire to share it. OK, I guess I should have posted on a legal website.

I cannot see why previous injustice (50 years...) should justify present injustice. In addition that was not what the regime change was billed as. Anyway, probably the wrong place for that argument as well.

I´ll have a look at the licence agreement. At this stage it is not clear to me what the problem is as any open source stuff stays open source whether you add to it or change it.

As for the dating comment: I can assure you that there are people who will not touch Ubuntu as a result of that - even the term Ubuntu is really an ex post facto label applied to something which never existed except in the minds of a few academics. Ok, admittedly this also is not the place for marketing/anthropology niceties either - which (btw, IMHO) is something the Linux community could exchange ideas about.

I never suggested you had an agenda although some of your statements lead me to believe if you could you would.

In a post colonial world past injustices are always remembered and used as a means to justify "positive discriminiation".

Have fun reading it, I stopped when it basically said any work I do that I agree to let Canonical use becomes theirs.

You can assure me of anything you want until the cows come home or the sky turns red and caves in, I still don't see and never will see the relevance of that comment as it was when it was made. Adding bits and pieces after the fact says to me you are dribbling bits of a story out to continue this line of discussion.

If you want to discuss anthropology start a new thread and I'll join in, I think a few others may as well, but do me a favour and keep the discussion relevant.