Mark Shuttleworth

Biographical Information
"Mark is founder of the Ubuntu Project, an enterprise Linux distribution that is freely available worldwide and has both cutting-edge desktop and enterprise server editions, and has become very popular.

"Mark studied finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town, and went on to found Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and cryptography. He sold Thawte to US company VeriSign in 1999, and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth Foundation. He moved to London in 2001, and began preparing for the First African in Space mission, training in Star City, Russia, and Khazakstan. In April 2002 Mark flew in space, as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. In early 2004 he founded the Ubuntu project, which aims to produce a free, high quality desktop OS for everybody."


 * Cofounder, Carbon War Room