Mark Shuttleworth

IRL Name:

Mark Richard Shuttleworth

Biography:

Mark Richard Shuttleworth is a South African entrepreneur, philanthropist, and space tourist who is the founder of Ubuntu Linux and Canonical Ltd. He is known as the first South African in space. In the 1990s, Shuttleworth participated as one of the developers of the Debian operating system.

Mark founded Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and cryptography. When Thawte was acquired in 1999 by VeriSign, and he founded HBD, an investment company, and setup the Shuttleworth Foundation, which funds innovative change in society by supporting Fellows and investing in their projects.

Facts

On 15 October 2006 it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of KDE, the highest level of sponsorship available.

In the Ubuntu project, Shuttleworth is often referred to with the tongue-in-cheek title Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, abbreviated SABDFL.

He is the second self-funded space tourist.

Rumors

Amp and RaT both want to punch him for founding Ubuntu.

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