Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth chats about Microsoft, marketing and open software…

Q: What about growth in adoption rates, any kind of numbers that you can give me?

A:We know now that there are probably at least 8 million [Ubuntu] users….

and later…

On the other hand, what they do want to do is they want customers to feel slightly nervous of Linux. I think Microsoft is certainly sort of becoming a smarter operator into how they interact with Linux and with free software. They spent a lot of time saying it doesn’t exist, it is a toy, it is a cancer, and it is dangerous, and calling it anti-capitalist, and now they seem to be engaging in a much more realistic competitive pragmatic fashion to that problem.

Read this and then read this…

Don’t think Ubuntu (or any Linux distribution) has anything to do with online marketing in general? Wrong. Think of Firefox. The browser was just the beginning of the sea change.