INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
After IBM announced its plans to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion, pundits quickly started speculating about when Red Hat competitors like
Suse and Canonical would sell as well
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, though, doesn&t seem to have any interest in selling — at least for the time being.
&I value my
independence,& he told me during a brief chat on the outskirts of the OpenStack Summit in Berlin today
In part, that because he simply doesn&t personally need the money but also because he&d like to see his vision for Canonical and Ubuntu
through to the end.
When he sold Thawte Consulting to Verisign for $575 million in 1999, people asked him if was about to go on a lifelong
And while he used some of that money to become the second space tourist (and fund his philanthropic foundation), he clearly has no interest
in that.
Still, he allowed for one circumstance that would get him to sell: if it allowed him to accelerate his vision for Canonical.
But
everything has a price and while Shuttleworth may not need the money, a sale would surely represent a worthwhile monetary reward for many a
Canonical employee.
It no secret that Shuttleworth would rather like to see Canonical to IPO, though
Earlier this year, he told me that this is still in the works, but it needs to hit the right numbers to get that.The company recent moves to
re-focus on the enterprise, which included shutting down a number of projects like the Ubuntu Phone and Unity desktop that weren&t directly
focused on that, seems to be paying off, so an IPO remains a viable option.
We&ll have a more formal sit-down interview with Shuttleworth
later this week, so keep your eyes open for that.
Don&t expect Ubuntu maker Canonical to IPO this year
