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Mark Shuttleworth

 
Mark Shuttleworth

 
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Mark Shuttleworth
 
 
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Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
n entrepreneur
Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an organization, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome....
 who was the second self-funded space tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd.
Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA....
 and as of 2009, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system.

He currently lives in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 and holds dual citizenship of South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
.

tleworth was born in Welkom
Welkom

Welkom is a city in the Lejweleputswa District Municipality of the Free State province of South Africa, with a population in 2001 of 408,173. It is 160 kilometres northeast of Bloemfontein, the provincial capital....
, Free State, South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 as a son of a surgeon and a kindergarten teacher.






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Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
n entrepreneur
Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an organization, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome....
 who was the second self-funded space tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd.
Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA....
 and as of 2009, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system.

He currently lives in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 and holds dual citizenship of South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
.

Early life

Shuttleworth was born in Welkom
Welkom

Welkom is a city in the Lejweleputswa District Municipality of the Free State province of South Africa, with a population in 2001 of 408,173. It is 160 kilometres northeast of Bloemfontein, the provincial capital....
, Free State, South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 as a son of a surgeon and a kindergarten teacher. After attending school at Rondebosch Boys' High School
Rondebosch Boys' High School

Rondebosch Boys' High School is a state school secondary school in Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. It was founded in 1897 and is known by the acronymn "RBHS"....
 and Diocesan College
Diocesan College

The Diocesan College, or Bishops as it is more commonly known, is a private, all-boys school situated in the suburb of Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa....
, Shuttleworth obtained a Business Science degree in Finance
Finance

The field of finance refers to the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated. Banks are the main facilitators of funding through the provision of credit, although private equity, mutual funds, hedge funds, and other organizations have become important....
 and Information Systems at the University of Cape Town
University of Cape Town

The University of Cape Town , is a public university located on the Cecil Rhodes Estate on the slopes of Devil's Peak , in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa....
. He lived in Smuts Hall
Smuts Hall

Smuts Hall is a men's residence on the upper campus of the University of Cape Town. It was named after General 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 Thawte
Thawte

Thawte 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....
 in 1995, which specialised in digital certificates and Internet security
Internet security

When a computer connects to a network and begins communicating with others, it is taking a risk. Internet security involves the protection of a computer's internet account and files from intrusion of an unknown user....
 and then sold it to VeriSign
VeriSign

VeriSign, Inc. is an United States company based in Mountain View, California that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the generic top-level domains for .com and .net, one of the largest Signaling System 7 signaling networks in North America, and the RFID directory fo...
 in December 1999, earning R
South African rand

The 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....
 3.5 billion (about US$
United States dollar

The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States and was defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 to be between 371 and 416 grains of silver ....
 575 million at the time).

In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital, a business incubator
Business incubator

Business 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 capital
Venture capital

Venture capital is a type of private equity capital typically provided to early-stage, high-potential, Growth investing companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or mergers and acquisitions of the company....
 provider.

In March 2004 he formed Canonical Ltd.
Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA....
, for the promotion and commercial support of free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre 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 minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 projects.

Linux

In the 1990s, Shuttleworth participated as one of the developers of the Debian
Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is one of the most popular and influential computer operating systems composed of free software and open source software....
 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
. In 2004 he returned to the free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre 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 minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 world by funding the development of Ubuntu, a Linux distribution
Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of 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.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA....


In 2001 he formed the Shuttleworth Foundation
Shuttleworth Foundation

South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth established the Shuttleworth Foundation in 2001, with the aim of driving social innovation in the field of education....
, a non-profit organization dedicated to social innovation which also funds educational and free
Free software

Free Software or software libre 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 minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 and open source software projects in South Africa, such as the Freedom Toaster
Freedom toaster

A Freedom Toaster is a public kiosk that will Optical disc authoring copies of free software onto user-provided CDs and DVDs....
.

In 2005 he founded the Ubuntu Foundation
Ubuntu Foundation

The 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 Life
Benevolent Dictator For Life

Benevolent Dictator For Life or BDFL is a title given to a small number of open source software development leaders. The term originally referred only to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python ....
, abbreviated SABDFL. To come up with a list of names of people to hire for the project, Mr. Shuttleworth took six months of Debian mailing list
Mailing list

A 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 list"....
 archives with him whilst travelling to the Antarctic
Antarctica

Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, overlying the South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctica of the southern hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean....
 aboard the icebreaker
Icebreaker

An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Although the term usually refers to icebreaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels ....
 Kapitan Khlebnikov
Kapitan Khlebnikov (icebreaker)

The Kapitan Khlebnikov is a Russian icebreaker. The vessel now operates as a cruise ship offering excursions to the Arctic and Antarctic....
 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 KDE
KDE

KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system....
, the highest level of sponsorship available.

Spaceflight

Mark Shuttleworth Nasa
Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as the second self-funded spaceflight participant
Spaceflight participant

A spaceflight participant is the description used by NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency for people who travel aboard space missions coordinated by those agencies who are not part of the crew....
. Working with Space Adventures
Space Adventures

Space Adventures, Ltd. is a space tourism company that provides human space missions to the world marketplace. It is the only company that is sending private space explorers....
, he launched aboard the Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n Soyuz TM-34
Soyuz TM-34

Soyuz TM-34 was a Soyuz spacecraft mission to the International Space Station launched by a Soyuz-U launch vehicle....
 mission, paying approximately US$
United States dollar

The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States and was defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 to be between 371 and 416 grains of silver ....
 20 million for the voyage. Two days later, the Soyuz spacecraft
Soyuz spacecraft

Soyuz ; English: Union) is a series of spacecraft designed for the Soviet space program by the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia....
 arrived at the International Space Station
International Space Station

The International Space Station is a research facility Assembly of the International Space Station in outer space. On-orbit construction of the station began in 1998, and is scheduled to be complete by 2011, with operations continuing until around 2015....
, where he spent eight days participating in experiments related to AIDS
AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the HIV ....
 and genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
 research. On 5 May 2002, he returned to Earth. In order to participate on the flight, Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training and preparation, including seven months spent in Star City, Russia
Star City, Russia

Star City is a military research and training facility near Shchyolkovo in Moscow Oblast, Russia, some 32 km northeast of Moscow. Cosmonauts have lived and trained in Star City at the Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Centre since the 1960s....
.

While in space he had a radio conversation with Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the first President of South Africa of South Africa to be elected in a universal suffrage democratic election, serving in the office from 1994?99....
 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 moving the conversation on. The terminally ill Miss Foster's conversation was enabled by the Reach for a Dream foundation.

Transport

He has a private jet, a Bombardier Global Express
Bombardier Global Express

The Bombardier Global Express is an ultra long range corporate and Very Important Person high speed jet aircraft produced by Bombardier Aerospace....
, 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