Yesterday, Canonical, the private company which leads development of the open-source operating system Ubuntu, started a crowdfunding campaign on the site IndieGoGo. The aim is to raise $32m to enable the production of the “Ubuntu Edge”, a planned smartphone running the operating system which will incorporate elements of the desktop software, to create what the company calls “next generation of personal computing”.
The device itself looks promising, although with a starter price of $830 (the crowdfunding campaign is offering discounts of up to $230 to early backers) it will need to be top-of-the-line to compete. Nonetheless, just a day in and they have already raised over $4m. But there’s a bigger question to be asked, which is: why crowdfund?
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