Canonical Creates Monetary Donation System for Ubuntu

Since its beginning, Canonical has worked hard to attract business. But now the company is also accepting user donations to support development of its main product, Ubuntu Linux. Is this simply a belated emulation of the main revenue strategy of many other open source projects, or does it have a more important meaning? Read on for some thoughts.

The idea of soliciting donations to support open source projects, of course, is nothing new. It’s as old as open source itself, and was particularly vital in the early days of the Free Software movement, before companies had begun leveraging open source code in financially sustainable ways.

Donating to Ubuntu

The Ubuntu Linux distribution, however, had long stood apart from many other major open source projects because it never sought public donations. To be sure, the Ubuntu community has benefited considerably from the philanthropic gestures of former Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, who invested $10 million in the Ubuntu Foundation. But Ubuntu developers never solicited gifts from the public at large.

But that has changed, as Steve George, Canonical vice president of Communications and Services, explained on the Canonical blog. Now, users who download installation images for the desktop (but not server or cloud) version of Ubuntu from the project’s website will see a screen inviting them to make a financial contribution to support Ubuntu development. They can choose one or several different specific development areas to which to donate money, and they can set the size of their contribution to whatever they like.

The donation screen.

As George noted, this donation system serves more than a financial purpose. In addition to generating cash, it allows Canonical to gain “direct feedback on which favourite features or projects deserve the bulk of our attention.”

Meanwhile, Canonical is also keen to make clear that donations are totally optional, and that Ubuntu remains completely free to download and use.

Canonical and Money

Some of Canonical’s critics will no doubt proclaim the decision to ask for public donations as a sign of the company’s financial desperation — which they will probably also link to the moral bankruptcy of the Ubuntu project itself in light of issues like the recent controversy over Amazon.com integration into the Unity dash.

But I’d think twice before drawing such conclusions. Although Canonical’s finances remain entirely private, and the financial situation of the company subject to mere speculation, it is actively pursuing a number of initiatives on the desktop, server and cloud fronts to generate revenue. There’s no evidence to doubt that many of these efforts, such as the sale of applications in the Ubuntu Software Center and paid support services for Ubuntu Server deployments, are successful.

Instead of financial hard times, this move could simply reflect an effort by Canonical to involve more users in the Ubuntu community without requiring technically oriented contributions. For those users who can’t write code or documentation, or design pretty interfaces, throwing a few dollars (or pounds, or euros, or what have you) at Ubuntu development can make it easier to feel like the software they are using is their own. And if mushy, goodwilled feelings are part of the Free Software experience, that only makes sense.