Contrary to What Shallow "News" Sites Said, Canonical's Profits and Cash Flows Did Not Improve, Almost 50% Increase in Marketing Budget (Investment in Branding, Not Engineering, Just Like Microsoft)
And "lots of bureaucracy," as an associate tells...
Today I decided to finally (and somewhat belatedly) start looking into the latest financial report from Canonical. Some associates may do the same later. Some have an independent opinion or access to certified accountants who can unpack the bureaucracy, undoing some of the positive-sounding spin. The accountants - like lawyers - have their own language or codes. That makes them more necessary and helps obfuscate meanings, denying the layperson full access.
It's this time of the year the deadline (and British law) compels companies to divulge details that they must (my last employer is now deep in overdraft). They don't give it away easily and accountants help them deter/gaslight critics/sceptics.
I saw some mentions of Canonical's report the other day (primarily registered in the UK). But those seemed too shallow. Canonical is many things:
The reports I saw seemed like clickbait. They just quoted and relied on promotional remarks from Canonical at the very start of a 75-page report. Look deeper: (local copy of the full report)
That's the real headcount. As I noted yesterday, Sirius Open Source, where I worked, used to fake its own. The reports we saw about this [1, 2] repeated what Canonical said at the beginning of the report. One of them at least said "the report noted a decrease in cash flow from operating activities, which fell to $47 million from $62 million in the previous year. This decrease was largely due to the increased working capital necessary to support the expanded scale of operations."
Comparing 2022 and 2023, mind the screenshots below.
Remembering that the company's founder, Mark Shuttleworth, already has a history of running afoul of tax laws (in South Africa), the casual reader must be sceptical. He lost a court case over this. He got fined after years in court. As someone put it back then: "This from a man who has departed the country he loved for “financially motivated” reasons. You’ve got to wonder how much money will be enough."
Mark Shuttleworth was a friend of my old boss, who defrauded us and stole our pension money without telling anyone (sans his wife at the time; she participated in the theft so they can take the whole family abroad to Disneyland and Disneyworld). █