Mark Shuttleworth (born the September 18th 1973 with Welkom, free State of Orange) is a South-African contractor . He was one of the first tourists of space and the first South-African one to travel in space.

Biography

Mark Shuttleworth studied finances and the management of the information systems at the university of the Cape after having followed studies to the Diocesan College.

In 1995, it founded Thawte, specialized company in safety Internet. It sold the latter in 1999 with VeriSign. Shuttleworth created HBD Capital Venture then, a company of Capital risk and the Shuttleworth Foundation, which creates educational projects in South Africa.

In the middle of the years 1990, it was developer Debian and in 2004, it turned over to the world of GNU/Linux by creating Ubuntu, a new distribution Linux (of which the acknowledged objective is to popularize this operating system) via its company Canonical Ltd. In 2005, it founded the Ubuntu Foundation and an initial contribution of 10 million dollars brought to him. The purpose of the foundation is to remunerate the developers of Ubuntu.

October 15th, 2006 it becomes the first “ Patron ” of KDE, it is in fact more the possible high level of sponsorship of KDE e.V. (non-profit organization, supporting project KDE legally).

Flight carried out

The April 25th 2002, Shuttleworth took share with the Russian mission Soyuz TM-34, as a tourist of space, for the approximate sum of 20 million dollars of the United States. Two days later, the spaceship Soyuz arrived at the International space station, where Shuttleworth spent eight days, participant in experiments relating to research on the Sida and the Génome. The May 5th, it regained the Earth. In order to take part in this flight, Shuttleworth had to be involved and prepare during one year, including seven month with the Cité of the stars of Moscow.

Others

• the Surnom of Shuttleworth is SABDFL (Coil-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life).

External bonds

• Official site
• Interview of Mark Shuttleworth
• Summarized accomplished flights
• list of the " patrons" KDE

Note

Random links:

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