Based on some news from the end of the week [1], Ubuntu, Canonical's common carrier, is promoting itself using an SDK, just like the tools which Canonical developed to boost development for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. Despite the disgusting negativism in the press, e.g. [2,3], Edge is doing well and raising a lot of money. Mark Shuttleworth will carry on irrespective of the goal.
Changes in Ubuntu will speed up the process of building apps and getting them approved for Software Center - but they could leave you more tied into the Linux distro’s software development kit (SDK).
Within hours the phone had raised millions and is, in a way, the most successful crowdfunding project ever, breaking the $10,266,845 (€£6,546,000) record set by the Pebble watch -- but the campaign finishes on 22 August and the figure is still nearly $20 million (€£12.75 million) shy of its target.
Trying to raise $32 million via crowdfunding always looked overly ambitious. And indeed it has proved to be so. Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo campaign to build a smartphone designed for converged computing has fallen considerably short of its target, ending with the fixed funding project receiving nothing at all — which, when you’ve got pledges worth around $12 million, has got to hurt. The campaign ran from July 22 to August 21.