ArsGeek

The ArsGeek team has managed to get an exclusive from Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder and patron of Ubuntu in partnership with Canonical Ltd. let us know via email this morning that they will be developing and marketing a new “open source cereal” called UbuntOS to promote healthy eating, the sharing of good eating habits and open, chemical free ingredients.

According to Shuttleworth, speaking through Canonical Ltd in an exclusive first-look email to ArsGeek “We’re here to leverage the power and drive behind Ubuntu and the open source community to tackle the global issues of healthy eating, whether it’s obesity or famine. Together we can develop a product that is made from freely grown grains and distributed through an open network for a fraction of the cost of current breakfast cereals”.

“This will be a community project” he continues. His outline is to at first include grains and cereals grown and harvested by well know Ubuntu and open source software developers in every batch of UbuntOS. “At first our contributions will be very limited. A number of us have small household gardens we’ve been using.” Shuttleworth’s goal is for the small gardens to spread amongst Linux developers and users, to the point where contributions of grain from individual gardens will drive the price of UbuntOS to a fraction of normal cereals, with the potential for free distribution not out of the question. “It would be great to see everyone who really needs this product getting it without cost to themselves or their governments.”

Shuttleworth states that UbuntOS will be featured on the Canonical Projects page in late July to coincide with the Ubuntu Live event, being held in Portland, Oregon July 22-24th of this year.

Canonical Ltd is a privately held company based on the Isle of Man with offices in London and Montreal.

Mark Shuttleworth, a South African Entrepreneur and founder of the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Ubuntu Foundation made his fortune from the sale of his company, Thawte, to VeriSign in the late 90s. He is most well known as the second self-funded space tourist.