Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African and British entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system.[1] In 2002, Shuttleworth became the first African to travel to space, doing so as a space tourist.[2][3][4] He holds dual citizenship from South Africa and the United Kingdom.[5][6] As of 2020, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Shuttleworth's worth at £500 million.[7]
In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital (Here be Dragons), a business incubator and venture capital provider, now managed by Knife Capital.[14] In March 2004 he formed Canonical Ltd., for the promotion and commercial support of free software projects, particularly the Ubuntu operating system. In December 2009, Shuttleworth stepped down as CEO of Canonical Ltd. to focus on "product design, partnerships, and customers", with COO Jane Silber succeeding him.[15] Shuttleworth returned to the position of CEO of Canonical in July 2017, with Silber moving to Canonical's board of directors.[16]
In the 1990s, Shuttleworth participated as a developer of the Debianoperating system.[17] According to the Official Ubuntu Book, he was the first to upload the Apache HTTP Server "into the Debian project's archives".[12]
In 2004, he returned to the free-software world by funding the development of Ubuntu, a Linux distribution based on Debian, through his company, Canonical Ltd.[18]
In 2005, he founded the Ubuntu Foundation and made an initial investment of US$10 million. In the Ubuntu project, Shuttleworth is often referred to with the tongue-in-cheek title "Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life" (SABDFL).[19] While travelling to Antarctica aboard the icebreakerKapitan Khlebnikov in early 2004, Shuttleworth took six months of Debian mailing list archives with him to compile a list of potential hires for the project.[20] In September 2005, he purchased a 65% stake of Impi Linux.[21]
On 15 October 2006, Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of KDE, the highest level of commercial sponsorship available.[22] This relationship and financial support for Kubuntu (the Ubuntu variant using KDE as the main desktop) ended in 2012.
On 17 December 2009, Shuttleworth announced that, effective March 2010, he would step down as CEO of Canonical to focus on product design, partnerships, and customers. Jane Silber, COO since 2004, succeeded him as CEO.[23]
In September 2010, he received an honorary degree from the Open University for this work.[24]
On 25 October 2013, Shuttleworth and Ubuntu received the Austrian anti-privacy Big Brother Award for sending local Ubuntu Unity Dash searches to Canonical servers by default.[26][27][28][29] In 2012, Shuttleworth had defended the anonymisation method used.[30] He later reversed the decision; this feature is not present in current Ubuntu versions.
Spaceflight
Shuttleworth on board the International Space Station
Shuttleworth gained international attention on 25 April 2002, becoming the second self-funded space tourist (after Dennis Tito in 2001) and the first South African in space.[a] Flying through Space Adventures, he launched aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission as a spaceflight participant,[31] paying approximately US$20 million[32] for the voyage (equivalent to $32.39 million in 2023). Two days later, the Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station, where he spent eight days participating in experiments related to AIDS and genome research. On 5 May 2002, he returned to Earth on Soyuz TM-33. To participate in the flight, Shuttleworth underwent one year of training and preparation, including seven months in Star City, Russia.[33]
From space, he spoke via video link to Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, as part of the Freedom Day celebrations marking the end of apartheid.[34]
He also had a radio conversation with Nelson Mandela and a 14-year-old South African girl, Michelle Foster, who asked him to marry her. He dodged the question, stating that he was "very honoured at the question" before changing the subject.[32] The terminally ill Foster was provided the opportunity to have a conversation with Mark Shuttleworth and Nelson Mandela by the Reach for a Dream foundation.[35][36]
Transport
He owns a private jet, a Bombardier Global Express, often referred to as Canonical One but owned through his HBD Venture Capital company.[37][38][39] The dragon depicted on the side of the plane is Norman, the HBD Venture Capital mascot.[40]
Legal clash with the South African Reserve Bank
When moving R2.5 billion in capital from South Africa to the Isle of Man, the South African Reserve Bank imposed a R250 million levy to release his assets.[41] Shuttleworth successfully sued the Reserve Bank in the Supreme Court of Appeal to have the levy returned. However, on 18 June 2015, the Constitutional Court of South Africa reversed the lower courts' ruling, finding that the primary purpose of an exit charge was to regulate conduct rather than raise revenue.[42] The court held "...that the exit charge was not inconsistent with the Constitution. The dominant purpose of the exit charge was not to raise revenue but rather to regulate conduct by discouraging the export of capital to protect the domestic economy."[43]
Notes
^Shuttleworth is the first citizen of an independent African country to go into space. Patrick Baudry, an earlier astronaut, was also born in Africa; however, since Baudry's native Cameroon was a French colony at the time of his birth, he is considered a French citizen. Shuttleworth also had British citizenship at the time of his flight.
References
^"Canonical". Canonical Ltd. Archived from the original on 8 April 2017. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
^"Nasa makes space tourism U-turn". BBC News Online. 12 December 2001. Retrieved 2 September 2012. approval to plans to make the South African internet millionaire Mark Shuttleworth
^"Space tourist lifts off". BBC News Online. 25 April 2002. Retrieved 2 September 2012. South African internet millionaire Mark Shuttleworth is heading for a short stay
^Leake, Jonathan; Swinford, Steven (19 July 2009). "It's blast-off Britain as ban on space flight ends". The Sunday Times. London. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 28 February 2025. Mark Shuttleworth, a South African entrepreneur with dual British nationality...
^"Interesting Facts". Invitation to Bishops. Bishops Diocesan College. Archived from the original on 17 October 2013. Retrieved 29 September 2012. Mark Shuttleworth was Head boy in 1991 and was the first Afronaut in Space on 2 April 2002
^"Honorary Awards 2010"(PDF). Conferment of Honorary Degrees and Presentation of Graduates. The Open University. 25 February 2010. pp. 8, 13. Archived from the original(PDF) on 8 October 2010. Retrieved 21 September 2010. Mr Mark Shuttleworth, DUniv, Versailles, 11 September
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