Last week Open Season (a Register podcast) featured an interview with Mark Shuttleworth; it's definitely worth checking out. Below is a brief summary of the more interesting topics discussed.

The interview started with talk about Dell's Ubuntu laptop and its misbehaving touchpad. This turned into predictions on how long it will be before Linux desktop software is ready for a broader user base.

Next, the participants engaged in a long discussion of the weak points of the OpenOffice.org office suite. Mark describes the current state of OO.org as being "a bit of a tragedy." He believes that the problem with it is the bungling interaction between the "corporate folks" and the community, also remarking that potential contributors are deterred from participating due to extremely long build times for OO.org -- 8 to 9 hours. He says if he doesn't see signs of a turnaround in the next few months he'll start looking elsewhere for Ubuntu's included office suite.

He believes that ultimately the success of OpenOffice.org in specific, and community-developed software in general, requires that it switch to a Firefox-style model in which the core software is small, streamlined, and handled by a small team, and additional functionality can be easily added by the wider community through extensions, without the need to compile a massive amount of code or have commit access.

They also talked about Oracle's position in the Linux ecosystem, remarking at one point they were very close to having Ubuntu certified by Oracle, but then Oracle decided it wanted its own Linux offering, which turned out to be little more than a copy of Red Hat. Shuttleworth doesn't think that strategy is going to work.

Looking forward, the Ubuntu founder said he was very enthusiastic about the future applications of virtualization technology, believing it will "touch a whole bunch of different things." He also remarked about consumer electronics and the mobile versions of Ubuntu, and improved collaboration with Launchpad.

The participants also spent some time discussing The European Union v. Microsoft. Shuttleworth wondered what the effective and appropriate remedies would be. He speculates that forcing Microsoft to disclose formats and protocols in an effective way (not what they've done so far) and perhaps requiring access to intellectual property would go a long way to toward making sure that projects like Samba and OpenOffice.org can have a level playing field on which to compete.

Interestingly, one of the interviewers asked who Ubuntu's biggest competitors are. Shuttleworth defied expectations by stating that Ubuntu really isn't competing against other major Linux distros -- really it's a competition between the proprietary and open source ideologies.

Interestingly, Mark Shuttleworth spends the last 10 minutes of the interview asking his interviewer questions. He really comes off as a cool and humble guy. As an example of his humility he jokes that he hates meeting people in person because they always say "I thought you were taller."

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Copyright 2007 JEM Electronic Media, Inc. No reprints without written permission.