Bonum Certa Men Certa

Mark Shuttleworth With a Beard Starts Sounding More Like Richard Stallman

Mark Richard Buranov Shuttleworth Photo from Space Facts



Summary: Ubuntu's founder Mark Shuttleworth explains that his beard is grown as a political statement while he orders the elimination of ACPI, which is favoured by the world's biggest back doors proponent, the NSA (and GCHQ)

Mark Shuttleworth is a fascinating and charismatic man. At a very young age, equipped with Free software, he was able to make his dreams come true and he is still very good at business [1]. In recent years many tried to portray him as a greedy exploiter -- a narrative we rejected and fought back against. As a man who grew up in South Africa, he is aware of discrimination (sometimes to the extreme) and now that he lives in the UK he must be seeing some of the same symptoms, which is why he is growing a beard [2] (to make a statement).



"If Shuttleworth rejects ACPI, then he should also reject UEFI and Amazon (especially the Fog Computing aspect of it)."To be politically expressive sometimes contradicts and interferes with business. Just look at what's being done to Mozilla right now. We are not going to entertain the politics of intimidation and blackmail (into conformity, by threatening one's job and free speech), but a lot of readers may already know what we refer to. Either way, earlier this month, in response to NSA revelations, Mark Shuttleworth made it quite apparent that surveillance software like Skype won't return into Ubuntu's front page (in the Web site) any time soon. Shuttleworth seems to be grasping the fact that we are moving in a bad direction in technology, where surveillance and back doors are becoming somewhat of a norm. Earlier today a reader send us this news link [3] about US legislators wanting to require back doors not just in phones but also desktops/laptops (call it "Back Doors by Law"). This is seriously messed up!

Now, taking into account monopoly abuser's promotion of UEFI, which enables remote destruction of computers (the NSA helps validate this) we should definitely avoid it. Given what Amazon does with the CIA, we should avoid it too, not put Amazon spyware inside Ubuntu (in my job I was writing puppet config files to remove this spyware from hundreds of federated desktops). On the bright side of things, despite Canonical supporting Amazon and UEFI, Mr. Shuttleworth now declares war on ACPI [4], which is deemed a proprietary security threat (possible hijacking or remote bricking, like UEFI). There was press generated to that effect thanks to Mr. Shuttleworth [5-7], raising awareness among many.

Shuttleworth is not typically techno-political, except perhaps when it comes to software freedom. So his stance on ACPI is hopefully the start of more such stance changes. If Shuttleworth rejects ACPI, then he should also reject UEFI and Amazon (especially the Fog Computing aspect of it).

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Vendors “looking seriously” at Ubuntu – Shuttleworth
    Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, said that he is “very confident that large manufacturers are looking seriously at Ubuntu as the new open platform of choice”, following the recent announcement that it is working with two small players – bq and Meizu – to bring the first smartphones using the platform to market.


  2. Here’s why Mark Shuttleworth is growing beard
    “There is a slightly serious angle to beard. One of my colleagues was stopped and held by transport police in UK. He was questioned for hours. There was no justification to it and so while he was leaving, he asked them the reason and they said it was the beard. This is disgusting. A society should be civilised enough to not judge people on the basis of how they look.”


  3. Feds want an expanded ability to hack criminal suspects’ computers
    The United States Department of Justice wants to broaden its ability to hack criminal suspects’ computers according to a new legal proposal that was first published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

    If passed as currently drafted, federal authorities would gain an expanded ability to conduct “remote access” under a warrant against a target computer whose location is unknown or outside of a given judicial district. It would also apply in cases where that computer is part of a larger network of computers spread across multiple judicial districts. In the United States, federal warrants are issued by judges who serve one of the 94 federal judicial districts and are typically only valid for that particular jurisdiction.


  4. ACPI, firmware and your security
    If you read the catalogue of spy tools and digital weaponry provided to us by Edward Snowden, you’ll see that firmware on your device is the NSA’s best friend. Your biggest mistake might be to assume that the NSA is the only institution abusing this position of trust – in fact, it’s reasonable to assume that all firmware is a cesspool of insecurity courtesy of incompetence of the worst degree from manufacturers, and competence of the highest degree from a very wide range of such agencies.


  5. Linux Bugs but Proprietary the Threat Says Shuttleworth
  6. Mark Shuttleworth Calls For An End To ACPI


  7. Proprietary firmware poses a security threat, Ubuntu founder says




Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete