Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n
entrepreneurAn entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
who was the second self-funded
space touristSpace Tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry...
. Shuttleworth founded
Canonical Ltd.Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu Linux and related projects. Canonical is registered in London and employs staff around the world...
and as of 2010, provides leadership for the
UbuntuUbuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
operating system. He currently lives on the
Isle of ManThe Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
and holds
dual citizenshipMultiple citizenship is a status in which a person is concurrently regarded as a citizen under the laws of more than one state. Multiple citizenships exist because different countries use different, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, citizenship requirements...
of
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
Early life
Shuttleworth was born in
WelkomWelkom is a city in the Free State province of South Africa, located 160 kilometres northeast of Bloemfontein, the provincial capital. Welkom received municipal status in 1961 and was declared a city in 1968 on the 14th of February...
,
Free StateThe Free State is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, which is also South Africa's judicial capital. Its historical origins lie in the Orange Free State Boer republic and later Orange Free State Province. The current borders of the province date from 1994 when the Bantustans...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
as a son of a surgeon and a nursery school teacher. After attending school at
Rondebosch Boys' High SchoolRondebosch Boys' High School is a state secondary school in Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. It was founded in 1897 and is known by the acronym "RBHS".-Academics:...
and then Western Province Preparatory School and
Diocesan CollegeThe Diocesan College, or Bishops as it is more commonly known, is an independent, all-boys school situated in the suburb of Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa...
, Shuttleworth obtained a Business Science degree in
Finance"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
and Information Systems at the
University of Cape TownThe University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...
. He lived in
Smuts HallSmuts Hall is a men's residence on the upper campus of the University of Cape Town. It was named after Field Marshal The Rt. Hon. Jan Smuts. It provides housing for around 240 students....
, where he was involved in the installation of the first residential Internet connections at the university.
Work
Shuttleworth founded
ThawteThawte Consulting is a certificate authority for X.509 certificates. Thawte was founded in 1995 by Mark Shuttleworth in South Africa and is the second largest public CA on the Internet.-Origins:...
in 1995, which specialised in digital certificates and
Internet securityInternet security is a branch of computer security specifically related to the Internet. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet. The Internet represents an insecure channel for exchanging information leading to a high risk of intrusion or fraud,...
and then sold it to
VeriSignVerisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...
in December 1999, earning
RThe rand is the currency of South Africa. It takes its name from the Witwatersrand , the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built and where most of South Africa's gold deposits were found. The rand has the symbol "R" and is subdivided into 100 cents, symbol "c"...
3.5 billion (about
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
575 million at the time).
In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital, a
business incubatorBusiness incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts...
and
venture capitalVenture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
provider. In March 2004 he formed
Canonical Ltd.Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu Linux and related projects. Canonical is registered in London and employs staff around the world...
, for the promotion and commercial support of
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
projects. In December 2009, Shuttleworth stepped down as the C.E.O. of Canonical, Ltd.
Involvement in Linux and FOSS
In the 1990s, Shuttleworth participated as one of the developers of the
DebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
In 2001 he formed the
Shuttleworth FoundationSouth African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth established the Shuttleworth Foundation in January 2001. There have been various iterations of the Foundation and how it invests in social innovation...
, a non-profit organization dedicated to social innovation which also funds educational,
freeFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, and open source software projects in South Africa, such as the
Freedom ToasterA Freedom Toaster is a public kiosk that will burn copies of free software onto user-provided CDs and DVDs.- History :The original Freedom Toaster project was sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth's Shuttleworth Foundation...
.
In 2004 he returned to the
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
world by funding the development of
UbuntuUbuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
, a
Linux distributionA Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...
based on Debian, through his company
Canonical Ltd.Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu Linux and related projects. Canonical is registered in London and employs staff around the world...
In 2005 he founded the
Ubuntu FoundationThe Ubuntu Foundation is a purpose trust founded by Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd. to ensure the long-term maintenance of the Ubuntu Linux distribution independently of the commercial activities of Canonical Ltd...
and made an initial investment of 10 million dollars. In the Ubuntu project, Shuttleworth is often referred to with the tongue-in-cheek title
Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for LifeBenevolent Dictator For Life is a title given to a small number of open-source software-development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community....
, abbreviated
SABDFL. To come up with a list of names of people to hire for the project, Shuttleworth took six months of Debian
mailing listA mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
archives with him while travelling to
Antarctica aboard the
icebreakerAn icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels .For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most...
Kapitan KhlebnikovThe Kapitan Khlebnikov is a Russian icebreaker. The vessel now operates as a cruise ship offering excursions to the Arctic and Antarctic.-History:...
in early 2004. In September 2005, he purchased a 65% stake of Impi Linux.
On 15 October 2006 it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of
KDEKDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, the highest level of sponsorship available.
On 17 December 2009 Mark announced that, effective March 2010, he would step down as CEO of Canonical to focus energy on product design, partnership and customers.
Jane SilberJane Silber is Chief Executive Officer at Canonical Ltd. since March 2010, replacing Mark Shuttleworth.Silber joined Canonical in July 2004. Her work at Canonical has included leading the Ubuntu One project and ensuring that large organizations find Ubuntu "enterprise-ready"...
, COO at Canonical since 2004, took on the job of CEO at Canonical.
In September 2010, he received an honorary degree from the
Open UniversityThe Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
for this work.
Spaceflight
Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as the second self-funded
space touristSpace Tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry...
and the first ever
AfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n in space. Flying through
Space AdventuresSpace Adventures, Ltd. is a Virginia, USA-based space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. , offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights , and other spaceflight-related experiences including cosmonaut training, spacewalk training, and launch tours...
, he launched aboard the
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n
Soyuz TM-34Soyuz TM-34 was the fourth Soyuz mission to the International Space Station . Soyuz TM-34 was launched by a Soyuz-U launch vehicle.-Crew:-Docking with ISS:*Docked to ISS: April 27, 2002, 07:55 UTC...
mission as a
spaceflight participantSpaceflight participant is the term used by National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Russian Federal Space Agency for people who travel aboard space missions coordinated by those agencies who are not part of the crew...
, paying approximately
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
20 million for the voyage. Two days later, the
Soyuz spacecraftSoyuz , Union) is a series of spacecraft initially designed for the Soviet space programme by the Korolyov Design Bureau in the 1960s, and still in service today...
arrived at the
International Space StationThe International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
, where he spent eight days participating in experiments related to
AIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
and
genomeIn modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
research. On 5 May 2002, he returned to Earth on
Soyuz TM-33Soyuz TM-33 was a manned Russian space launch on Oct 21, 2001, on the Soyuz-U launch vehicle. Its mission was to carry a new crew and supplies to the International Space Station.-Crew:-Docking with ISS:...
. In order to participate in the flight, Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training and preparation, including seven months spent in
Star City, RussiaStar City is a common name of an area in Moscow Oblast, Russia, which has since the 1960s been home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center...
.
While in space he had a radio conversation with
Nelson MandelaNelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
and a 14 year old South African girl, Michelle Foster, who asked him to marry her. He politely dodged the question, stating that he was "very honoured at the question" before changing the subject. The terminally ill Miss Foster was provided the opportunity to have a conversation with Mark Shuttleworth and Nelson Mandela by the Reach for a Dream foundation.
Transport
He has a private jet, a
Bombardier Global ExpressThe Bombardier Global Express is an ultra long range corporate and VIP high speed jet aircraft produced by Bombardier Aerospace. The Bombardier Global 5000 is a slightly shorter version...
, which is often referred to as
Canonical One but is in fact owned through his
HBD Venture Capital company. The dragon depicted on the side of the plane is "Norman", the HBD Venture Capital mascot.
External links