The new SUSE Linux Desktop 10 from Novell Inc. sports some impressive graphics capabilities. What are your plans in this area? We felt we weren't quite ready for this 6.06 release so I expect we'll have similar graphics features in the fall release. Our mantra throughout this development cycle was "rigid and boring." Someone would say, 'This feature is really shiny and cool, let's put it in,' and I'd say, 'Nope, we need to be rigid and boring.'

That's music to a CIO's ears!

So everything we do, from soliciting ideas about new features, writing specs for those features, reviewing which ones we keep or reject -- and we reject a lot of them -- is made publicly available.

Corporate customers feel that buying a piece of software, since paid support is usually involved, is a de facto investment in the vendor, too. Describe Canonical's business model.

We have the luxury of a very long-term outlook, because we have a stable funding source, and because of our absolute commitment to the principles of open-source. So while some people look askance at tying themselves to a startup, we are no more risky than any other company.