Ubuntu
From P2P Foundation
Ubuntu is both the 'brand' name of a version of Linux for the desktop that is easy to use, but also a relational concept derived from the Bantu language of South Africa.
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Ubuntu as software
URL = http://www.ubuntu.com/support
Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28Linux_distribution%29
Definition
“a free, user-friendly operating system that combines Linux with a word processor, Web browser, spreadsheet application and PDF reader. The software is distributed by CD, upgraded every six months, and is easy for ordinary computer users to install.”
Description
“Mark Shuttleworth, an entrepreneur from Cape Town, South Africa, is the driving force behind Ubuntu . Shuttleworth sold his digital-security company for $500 million, and since 2004 has spent $25 million in developing and distributing Ubuntu to the people of the world. His goal is to distribute localized versions of Ubuntu to dozens of countries where people cannot afford (or even acquire) proprietary software in their own language. “There are some 350 languages in the world with more than a million speakers,” Shuttleworth told The Economist (June 7, 2007). “Free software is only translated in a significant way into about 20 of those, although this is already a lot greater penetrating than proprietary software.” (http://onthecommons.org/node/1171)
Status Report 2007
David Bollier at http://onthecommons.org/node/1171
“More than six million CDs with Ubuntu have been distributed already. While diffusion is still in its early stages, momentum is growing. Just this month, the French Parliament switched its computers to Ubuntu. Dell, the computer maker, offers computers pre-loaded with the system, and makes money by selling technical support and service for the software. Michael Dell says he has Ubuntu on his personal computer.
Ubuntu represents the next, more mature stage in the evolution of free/open source software. The project is not about bashing proprietary software, but about building better software and sharing communities on a global scale. What’s fascinating is how efficient the Ubuntu commons has been. For a fraction of the advertising budget for Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, Ubuntu is reaching millions of people with free, high-quality software that gives them greater user freedoms -- and this viral growth is likely to expand.
Ubuntu is also likely to seed a new generation of innovators who in time could out-perform Americans locked into the culture of proprietary software. As Linux becomes the standard platform for the next generation of tech innovation, it could also begin to dissolve proprietary technical barriers that currently make various portable devises incompatible. A new interoperability via Linux could unleash powerful new rounds of bottom-up innovation.” (http://onthecommons.org/node/1171)
Ubuntu as relational concept
More information in the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)
Ubuntu in Zulu means, - “I am because you are”
Ed Howker, writing in The First Post
"Ubuntu derives from Bantu, a southern African language, and relates to a Zulu concept - umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - which means "a person is only a person through other people".
Desmond Tutu's definition: "A person with ubuntu is open and available to others... and doesn't feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished." (http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=2&subID=961; requoted in http://westthink.blogspot.com/2007/01/neo-western-liberalism.html)
