FPL steps down: what's the real story?

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 04/08/2010 02:29 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Rahul Sundaram  wrote:
>
>     On 04/06/2010 02:39 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
>
>     > Meanwhile, back on the farm, Mark Shuttleworth pays his
>     developers and
>     > doesn't get a cent back... for now.
>
>     Far from true.  You need to check your facts.
>
>
> Oops! I missed this one. I received this message from Rahul and his
> email address appeared for reply. So, I thought it hadn't been posted
> to the group. So, here is what we came up to. I hope he will agree.

I strongly disagree with you emailing me offlist and then taking parts
of the conversation and posting in a public list.  That is hardly good
etiquette.  Setting that aside,

>
> Rahul observed that Shuttleworth was getting some money back from
> Ubuntu's contrats with companies. I, of course, knew this. Ubuntu's
> contract with la Gendarmerie française has, amongst others, been
> widely publicised.
I made no such observation.  This is your own claim.  I merely disagreed
with your factually incorrect claim and you have conceded that you were
wrong.  End of the point.

>
> My point was that he wasn't breaking even. Rahul said that since
> Ubuntu is not a public company, it's impossible to know this for sure.
> And we don't.
>
> But I read an interview with Shuttleworth less than 3 months ago and
> he certainly said so and though he's certainly a very shrewd
> businessman, I didn't hear anybody contesting this claim.
>
> Certainly he isn't making the kind of money the people here seem to
> get from RHF:

Again, you have no way to publicly verify the kind of money anybody
makes in a private company. It is pure speculation and assuming it is
true,  what does that actually mean?  Red Hat is more profitable as a
business than Canonical? Sure.

>
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=RHT
>
> In his last email Rahul wrote:
>
> "I have seen all that data before but I don't see the point you are
> trying to make.  You might as well as state it directly."
>
> Given the discussion we had here on some developers "contributing
> their work" for free... and others receiving a paltry pay in India,
> does anybody here have a problem understanding what I mean?

Yes, I am from India and although I can see your insinuations (paltry to
you might not be paltry to the rest of the world),  your message is
still not direct and I would like to hear it from you rather others
engaging in guess work,  Elaborate on the point you are trying to make. 
Why if some people make more money than others?  What's the problem? 
How is this all connected to FPL stepping down.?

Rahul