2000 to 2009: The Rise of Social Networks and Economic Crises - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 281

Note
The Ubuntu operating system is a popular variant of the Linux op-
erating system. The name “Ubuntu” is apparently based on a word
in an African dialect that means something like “kindness and com-
passion to all others.”
The open-source business model is to distribute various software packages for
free but to charge for support, consulting, and other various related services. So-
metimes this strategy is profitable, as demonstrated by Red Hat Software (dis-
cussed in the previous chapter). In the case of Canonical, revenues seem to be
moving toward $30 million, which is the approximate break-even point for Ca-
nonical.
Although Ubuntu is the flagship product, Canonical has many other packages
and also many services. Among the packages are Bazaar for revision control;
Malone (named after Bugsy Malone) for bug tracking; Rosetta for natural lan-
guage translation and localization of software packages; and Blueprints, a plan-
ning tool.
Open-source software has become an interesting and unique aspect of the larger
software industry. It is hard to think of any other industry where products are giv-
en away for free and revenues derive entirely from support and ancillary services.
Facebook
Before discussing Facebook the company, readers are urged to watch the interest-
ing movie The Social Network , which describes in some detail both the excitement
of software startups and some of the hazards, including being sued. The film is
broadly based on the creation of Facebook with, of course, some artistic license.
It shows the intellectual excitement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when software
was a high-growth industry. (I also founded a company in Cambridge, although 10
years prior to Facebook.)
Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard
roommates Eduardo Savarin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskowitz, and Chris
Hughes. The company was actually incorporated in Florida. The idea of Facebook
was that it would be a social website where fellow Harvard students could share
ideas, photographs, and topics of local interest.
Zuckerberg had started an earlier website in 2003 called FaceSmash. This was
a somewhat tactless website where people could compare photographs of two