Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth in the interview of the fortnight

One of the best — and longest running — Linux sites is LWN.net, which I should get into the blogroll, by the way, and it has an excellent interview with Ubuntu founder and leader Mark Shuttleworth.

On Ubuntu's push into the server market:

Given that Ubuntu's roots are on the desktop, what's behind the recent shift in strategy to address the server side too?

That's not a change in strategy, it's more a pull through. We started with a very narrow focus on the desktop, and that allowed us to punch in. As we've penetrated the industry, there's a natural pull through where someone who's started using us on their desktop has now started setting up Ubuntu on a server.

You could always run Ubuntu on a server; there was never a significant reason not to. That body of users has now reached a critical mass on the server, and so our server work is now more responding to that than a shift in strategy. We continue to make the desktop our labor of love, the server requires a very enterprise-oriented approach. We've built out a dedicated team that just handles that. We haven't re-assigned people who are desktop specialists and asked them to test a server.

You're not worried you're spreading yourselves too thinly?

That is a risk, and that's something we discuss here a lot. There are benefits to offering a platform that can be used in both configurations. We see companies often saying: "We love your desktop. We would definitely choose your desktop if we could also use you on the server."

Companies don't like to introduce arbitrary diversity in technology. Everybody has heterogeneous systems, but they don't like to make that situation worse without a very good reason for it. Ubuntu is a very good server for certain use-cases now, just like Ubuntu is a very good desktop for certain use-cases. Our challenge over the next couple of years is just to broaden the base to which it appeals on both fronts.