This page is to collect information about the Video conference with Mark Shuttleworth made on Friday July 6th, 2007 (3 pm-4.30 pm, GMT+7).

Trang này nhằm cung cấp thông tin về cuộc trao đổi giữa ông Mark Shuttleworth (”cha đẻ” của Ubuntu) và cộng đồng người dùng phần mềm tự do và mã nguồn mở ở Việt Nam, tại TPHCM và tại Hà Nội, đã diễn ra ngày 06/07/2007 qua kênh visioconferencing được xác lập tại trung tâm Phát triển và đào tạo HDLC, TPHCM. Bạn có thể tham khảo bản dịch tiếng việt tại trang Blog của anh Lê Trung Nghĩa ở đây.

The video conference (VC) started between HDLC (Ho Chi Minh City Development and Learning Center, a member of the World Bank’s Global Development & Learning Center’s network - GDLC), located at 178 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia - District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), and Mark Shutteleworth at Canonical’s headquarters in London at 3 pm (GMT+7) on Friday July 6th, 2007. The Hanoi’s VDIC joined the VC a little bit later. The quality of video and audio between HDLC and London was very good while the video quality between HDLC and VDIC was rather poor.

Mark could be seen sitting at a working table, in a conference room, with a laptop on the cover of which the Ubuntu’s logo was sticked on. While working he was waiting for our questions. Waiting for Hanoi to join in, we had a brief presentation of people presiding the VC in HCMC : Dr. Hoang Le Minh (Vice-director of Service of Post & Telecommunciations of HCMC), M. Hien (FOSS company operating for 1 year) and Vu Do Quynh (Agence universitaire de la Francophonie).

During the time waiting for Hanoi’s VDIC to join, Mark asked about How many people (among the audience) were acquainted with free softwares and about How was the support (in Linux) for Vietnamese fonts and keyboard typing (in Vietnamese). The audience gave him a positive answer about the Linux’s support for Vietnamese fonts and typing keyboard.

Below we have tried to retranscript the answers of Mark Shuttleworth as accurately as possible, based on written notes taken during the video conference. Comments inside “[...]” are relevant comments of Mark done elsewhere and comments inside parenthesis “(...)” are our addings to help in a better comprehension of what Mark was talking about.

Mark’s answer:
Ubuntu realizes the true spirit of free software:

Ubuntu is the result of collaborative work between individuals. Many people/groups have even done their own version of Ubuntu [Vietnam is encouraged to do its own version and shall do so]. All the changes made through the different versions of Ubuntu have been shared with Debian [on which Ubuntu is based] and the mainstream (Linux distributions).

Why is Ubuntu so popular ?

There is in fact a vast number of people who contributes to Ubuntu worldwide. There are many ways to contribute and the community that is supporting Ubuntu is very large. [This explains Ubuntu’s success : The popularity of Ubuntu stems from its quality recognized by the number of people using it]. You can develop packages, you can do translations, you can write documentations, etc. People who contributes in Ubuntu’s development can share with us the changes they have made so that we can incorporate them in newer versions of Ubuntu.

Free softwares can be as strong and as good quality as any other software platforms can be. We put a real emphasis on the quality of the software packages. Again, at Ubuntu we believe that collaboration among many contributors in producing softwares can produce better quality softwares than with a single contributor.

Free softwares should be freely available. We have no problems with business offerings at the same time around Ubuntu. But, we think there should be no license fees for the Ubuntu system and for security updates !

Mark’s answer:
In many tools incorporated with the Ubuntu system there are license agreements. You are not obliged to return to us the changes you may have made to the system, but you must publish them, make them available on the internet, in accordance with the license under which these tools have been released.

However, if you do return to us your changes, then we might incorporate them in the Ubuntu system so that the upgrading process will be better addressed, with your changes included in following versions.

Mark explain that instead of “forking” Ubuntu every time there’s a new version, incorporating new features or package back to Ubuntu, means that if you are offering remixed version of ubuntu, you can concentrate on new features because the one you have already contributed back will be there.

Mark’s answer:
Most developing activities go through email’s mailing lists [there are about 150 of them] and IRC channels. Vietnam is encouraged to start its own mailing-list. Twice a year, there is a conference for developers where they can discuss the road to follow for the next 6 months.

Mark’s answer:
It is basically all right if you use the Ubuntu logo during community’s activities. However the Ubuntu logo is covered by a trademark license. So if you want to use it in a commercial environment, you must have a look at our trademark policy.

Mark’s answer:
This year, with the forthcoming vote for/against the OOXML, MS Office Open XML, as an ISO standard, there is a chance to bring up a single open standard of document by countries voting against OOXML as a new ISO standard. This is very important for the development of the world’s technology !

For example : the internet works on a single standard technology which is TCP/IP ; the web browsing from everywhere is possible thanks to a single standard : HTML.

We already have one document standard, the ODF standard ISO-26300 : it is an open standard, easy to read, easy to understand and to implement.

Having only one standard brings in several benefits ! Especially it can increase competition.

With coming technologies, we may not run applications on a computer any more, but we are going to run them on the network.

This was a very interesting topic, Mark explain that normally there’s around 40 voting countries even though there’s more than 180 countries that can vote. But since Microsoft is asking countries to go and vote to adopt Microsoft OpenXML as standard we may expect more than 40 countries.

Mark’s answer:
If there’s 25% of “NO”, the OOXML proposal as a standard will be rejected. If there are less than 2/3 of “YES” the proposal will be rejected as well. Or, in other words, if 1/3rd of votes are “NO” and/or abstentions, then OOXML will be rejected as a standard.

By the way, voting against OOXML is not voting against Microsoft ! It is only a vote to insure that there will be a common single and open document standard ! There will be no problems for Microsoft to produce converters for ODF.

If the Microsoft’s proposal is rejected it will have an effect to force Microsoft to use the Open Document Format

Mark’s answer:
The key character of a good standard is that it is easy to implement ! Unfortunately, the OOXML proposed standard does not pass this test. In fact, it is very unlikely that any company could (fully) implement the OOXML standard.

HTML, for instance, is a very good standard. You can compare the complexity of a web page, nowadays, compared to a word processing page, for instance.

I can tell you about the Chinese government who found it was indeed better for them to embrace the ODF standard and merge it with their own produced standards than to go on with their own Chinese standard.

Mark’s answer:
The principal disadvantage of the ODF standard is that it is not supported by Microsoft !
We need to ask Microsoft to join ODF because it is a good and easy to implement standard. We can be sure, for instance, that ODF will have support for Vietnam custom-made scripts.

Mark talked about the role of technology in his career : He loved technology since its childhood. Living in the South African town of Cape Town, embracing technology would have meant for him to go the Californian Silicon Valley instead of working in his native town. But, came the internet and Mark was able to develop technologies on a pair basis with that of the Silicon Valley, right there from his home at Cape Town.

Mark’s answer:
From the ministries’s point of wiew, in the economics of software what is important is not what the software companies are charging when they sell softwares but how that software technology can be used in the society itself to produce products, and the derived value of these products.

Countries are benefiting tremendously from Free and Open Source softwares (FOSS).

If you develop softwares, you may release them as FOSS and as commercial softwares as well.

You can also release FOSS, create a large community around it and start to offer (payable) services.

Three way to make money with Free Open Source Software

a) Create software and get paid for it, sell it in dual license mode (alfresco, Red Hat )
b) Service software (installation, customization, debugging, upgrade, configuration etc) (Canonical)
c) Combine various FOSS application and create packages to fit specific needs (youtube, google,)