*Minutes of Mark Shuttleworth's talk at IIT-Bombay*

The GNU/Linux Users Group of Mumbai held an additional GLUG meet in january at KReSIT, IIT-Bombay. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth interacted with the GLUG members and shared his views and ideas regarding ``Free Software'' and how it made a perfect business sense. This talk was attended by about 60 people coming from all over the country.

Falling short of time, Mark Shuttleworth quickly talked about the following points, apart from answering questions.

* Community and its background:

Before starting his talk, Mark was eager to know about the Mumbai's GLUG community, its background.. since every GLUG is unique in its own respect. He then talked about his own background and about his ventures.

* Ubuntu Organisation Structure:

Mark talked about how ubuntu project started and what its goals are, how Ubuntu project is different from Debian yet how both still manage to collaborate with each other, how latest packages are adopted from upstream to make Ubuntu's archives always fresh.

* Business Sense:

Quoting Mark's own words, ``... knowledge and software are copyable. Their value or quality does not decrease when it is shared..''

According to him, this makes a perfect business sense. Ubuntu project, and all the best things that they produce, will always remain freely accessible to the entire community, individuals or large companies alike. Canonical is in a self sustaining business since it provides software services to organisations which are willing to hire them. Canonical has tied up with LPI and plans to start certification programs for Ubuntu professionals.

* Free CD distribution:

Mark answered several questions related to free software distribution and the rationale behind it. There are several parts of world where internet access is extremely costly. Free CDs therefore have an important role to play.

Some questions were asked about the free CDs that Canonical ships worldwide and how some people tend to misuse the resources. Mark then recalled an incident wherein a `gentoo' fanatic tried to drain out Canonical's money by ordering 500 CDs.

* Dapper Drake Preview:

Mark gave a brief idea about the upcoming ubuntu release codenamed `Dapper Drake' and why it is going to have a 3 year(desktop)/5 year(server) support cycle and security updates. Dapper is also a distribution which is going to be certified by third party application providers like IBM.

Starting from Dapper release, users will have the luxury of a GUI installation program and a single CD which acts as both live and installable.

* Freedom Toaster etc.

Answering a question related to Freedom Toaster, Mark explained the entire concept behind it and how the whole idea came into a reality during a brainstorming session. We couldn't talk about his space travel however due to lack of time.

- tea break

Mark personally autographed on Ubuntu CDs and stickers and posed for group photos. Though he left on time since he had to catch a flight, but GLUG members continued to interact till tea lasted :)

---- *Details of next GLUG meet:

Date: 12 February 2005 -> Agenda : to be decided -> Location: Some other garden probably.

* Presentation slides: Presentation slides of Mark's talk will be available from the glug homepage.

* Pictures: http://db.glug-bom.org/pics/ <Gallery2 Photo Album> http://www.glug-bom.org/pics/ <Classic Apache style>

Anurag