Canonical Ltd is a private company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of Free Software projects.

The first major product to be sponsored by the company is Ubuntu Linux , a Debian-based Linux distribution. Other projects sponsored by Canonical include the Bazaar (software) revision control system, Launchpad (website), and TheOpenCD project.

Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world.

=External link=