Mark Shuttleworth

A free desktop funded by its founder. Shuttleworth, who made his fortune selling the security firm Thawte, founded Canonical in 2004 to produce Ubuntu, a Linux distribution built on Debian's volunteer work with regular releases and a promise to stay free of charge. Canonical earns money from support and services for businesses and cloud servers, where Ubuntu became widespread. Some Debian and desktop users objected to its occasional unilateral decisions.