Google, the world's biggest search engine, has chosen to install the operating system developed by South African Mark Shuttleworth. But South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth won't make any money out of the deal: named Ubuntu, the software is open source and free for anyone to use.

In 1996 Shuttleworth started an internet consultancy in his parents' garage, selling it four years later to Verisign for $575-million (R3.58-billion). He has since used his fortune to set up the Shuttleworth Foundation, which promotes African maths and science education, and to champion open source, free-to-use, free-to-alter software that challenges costly brand-name products.

Shuttleworth also has the distinction of being the first African in space - SA's very own "afronaut" - after he became part of the mission crew of the Russian Soyez rocket in 2002.

The word ubuntu means "humanity to others" in several African languages, including Zulu and Xhosa. It's one of the founding principles of post-apartheid South Africa.

Shuttleworth invests about $10m a year in the software, which is distributed entirely free. Users can download it and use it without paying at all, and Shuttleworth's company, Canonical, will even post a free installation compact disc to anyone who ask for it.

Ubuntu has quickly become the open source operating system of choice around the world, with estimates of the number of computers running the software up to 6-million and doubling every eight months. Google says it will use Ubuntu on its internal computer system.

A computer running Ubuntu looks much like one running Microsoft's Windows. The interface has similar menus, icons and windows, and users can surf the internet with the popular Mozilla Firefox browser, or edit documents and spreadsheets with OpenOffice.

Instead of Windows blue, Ubuntu is predominantly brown. Other features hint at its African origin, such as the small burst of drumming that sounds when an application opens.

"We are extremely proud to have Google as a client," Canonical chief operating officer Jane Silber told Business Day. Google's adoption of the software was significant in showing the rest of the world that Ubuntu was a viable desktop system for any company or government in any country, she said.

Shuttleworth is negotiating with computer manufacturers to start selling PCs with the system preinstalled, according to Business Day. In South Africa he is talking to Mustek, which produces SA's best-selling Mecer computers, and with local manufacturers Pinnacle and Sahara.

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Source: SouthAfrica.info