Why do people assume that because something is open source, that means
that absolutely anyone and everyone can dictate it's direction? Mark
Shuttleworth and his team develop ubuntu out in the open, but he does
have the final say. As the man who created and financed the distro, his
vote counts infinitely more than that of the random free downloader, and
should.

Nobody says you have to run ubuntu - you have complete freedom of choice
here, and can run fedora, suse, debian, slackware, or even build your
own distro if you don't like.

But I for one think the ubuntu management deserve the benefit of the
doubt. Comparing them to microsoft is a strange piece of logic.