The sky is falling! Mark Shuttleworth, the same person who founded what is probably the most popular Linux distribution and has essentially been betting his time and money that desktop Linux can turn a profit, said today in an interview that “I don’t think anyone can make money from the Linux desktop.” Or did he…?

The answer is both yes and no. Yes, he probably did say the words, but no they don’t mean what you think they mean. A ComputerWorld article (not that I am criticizing ComputerWorld or the author, many places did it) on the interview gives some more details, under the eye-catching headline of “Ubuntu’s Shuttleworth: “I don’t think anyone can make money from the Linux desktop.”"

Apparently, Shuttleworth continued to explain his point. The critical part of the article is this:

The point is, Shuttleworth continued, “I’ve never seen selling shrink-wrapped packages of free software as a workable idea.” Instead, Shuttleworth sees “The only way to build business around software is with [added costs] services.”

This is an important distinction. Though this is probably not how Shuttleworth meant it, I, and apparently many others, first interpreted his quote to suggest that he had give up on Ubuntu ever making money. Instead, all he is saying is that you can’t make money by selling free software in a box. OK. I agree. That is nothing new, just a restatement of what he and others have said in the past.

As far as I can tell, the story that is being reported all over the place is a story about nothing. Like, most interviews with Shuttleworth, though, there is a lot of other interesting infromation in it.