Ubuntu to fund a better Linux?

Mark Shuttleworth, boss of Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu), famous as the guy who did what a lot of people said couldn't be done by making a fortune from Open Source is taking steps to improve Open Source by helping to fund development of some of the projects.

In his blog (which you can read here) he gives the reasons behind this, but it boils down to this:

Canonical is in a position to drive real change in the software that is part of Ubuntu. If we just showed up with pictures and prototypes and asked people to shape their projects differently, I can’t imagine that being well received! So we are also hiring a team who will work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE, with a view to doing some of the heavy lifting required to turn those desktop experience ideas into reality. Those teams will publish their Bzr branches in Launchpad and of course submit their work upstream, and participate in upstream sprints and events. Some of the folks we have hired into those positions are familiar contributors in the FLOSS world, others will be developers with relevant technical expertise from other industries.

Although Open Source has in recent years reached the point where it is suitable for everyday use, a little extra polish really doesn't hurt. It is nice to see a company that not only uses Open Source, but continues to invest money and resources back into it.