In the latest battle on distros, Ubuntu has been started by using Debian source code as its foundation. For a long time
Debian has been a great product expect its developers are more concerned about development then marketing.
The weaker marketing from Debians standpoint has opened a spot for
Ubuntu and other distributions to copy from them. This is what open source is all about. By Mark Shuttleworth starting with Debian, Ubuntu has an instant set of users and developers.
From the source code Mark Shuttleworth has been building a new community which will provide the product with the help of Mark Shuttleworth's investment. With any investment there is always demaind for a return.
His plans are to generate revenue by handling the installation and escalation support. There is a fair amount of install and escalation support needed for Microsoft and this would not change if users switched to a Linux desktop. The only thing that changes is the initial cost for the Operating system its self.
With that in mind, this is a really a battle of call centers and ubuntu is the carrot.
http://ubuntu.com
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth
http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2006/09/05/linux-ubuntu-opensource_cz_mr_0906shuttleworth.html
