Canonical

The team behind Canonical's Ubuntu Linux wants 2014 to be the year of Ubuntu app development. And it's reaching out to the Ubuntu community, especially the local LoCo team chapters spread across the world, to spearhead the effort, according to a blog post from Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon.

Bacon writes: "2014 is going to be a great year for Ubuntu App Developers. We laid down some fantastic foundations in 2013, but this year we want to extend and grow our community in multiple directions … building a solid, empowered on-ramp for creating awesome apps for Ubuntu."

Further expanding from its core mission of providing Linux distributions for desktop computers and servers, Canonical is developing a version of Ubuntu for smartphones.

The company plans to market the OS to smartphone handset manufacturers and wireless phone network operators, in part as an alternative to Android. Ubuntu did not announce any carriers or handset manufacturers that publicly plan to build Ubuntu phones yet.

OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt has slammed Red Hat and Canonical for the way they have reacted to Microsoft's introduction of "secure" boot along with Windows 8, describing both companies as wanting to be the new Microsoft.

Responding to a query from iTWire about what OpenBSD, widely recognised as the most security-conscious UNIX, would be doing to cope with "secure" boot, De Raadt said: "We have no plans. I don't know what we'll do. We'll watch the disaster and hope that someone with enough power sees sense."