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Mark Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973 in
Welkom, Free State Province|Free State) is a South
African entrepreneur. As an early space tourist,
he was the first Africanref|african in space.

After going to school at Diocesan College,
Shuttleworth obtained a Business Science degree in
Finance and Management information
systems|Information Systems at the University of
Cape Town. 

In 1995, he founded Thawte, which specialised in
digital certificates and internet security. He
sold Thawte in December 1999 to VeriSign, and
subsequently formed HBD Venture Capital, a
business incubator and venture capital provider,
and the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit
organisation dedicated to social innovation which
also funds educational projects in South Africa.

Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April
2002 as a civilian cosmonaut aboard the Russian
Soyuz TM-34 mission, paying approximately United
States dollar|US$ 20 million. Two days later, the
Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International
Space Station, where he spent eight days,
participating in experiments related to AIDS and
genome research. On 5 May, he returned to Earth.
In order to participate on the flight,
Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training
and preparation, including seven months which he
spent in Star City, Moscow|Star City, Moscow.

He participated as a Debian developer since the
early 1990s, and in 2004 he returned to the
GNU/Linux world by funding the development of
Ubuntu Linux, a user-friendly version of Linux,
through his company Canonical Ltd. In 2005 he
founded the Ubuntu Foundation and made an initial
investment of 10 million dollars. The foundation
is used to pay Ubuntu contributors.

Mark Shuttleworth 2004|currently lives in London.

== Footnote ==
#note|african Shuttleworth claimed to be the first
African in space, but some point out that Patrick
Baudry — a France|French astronaut who was
in space before Shuttleworth — was born in
Cameroon. Others point out, however, that Baudry
has always been a French citizen and that Cameroon
was still a French colony at the time of his
birth.

== See also ==
*List of astronauts by name
*List of South Africans - Voted 18th in the Top
100 Great South Africans

== External links ==
* http://www.markshuttleworth.com/ Mark
Shuttleworth's Homepage
*
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0
4/04/1859255&tid=90&tid=163&tid=160&tid=11
Collaborative interview of Mark Shuttleworth at
Slashdot, April 4, 2005
*
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;17743
72754 Interview of Mark Shuttleworth at
Computerworld, April 28, 2005
* http://www.tsf.org.za/ The Shuttleworth
Foundation
* http://www.hbd.com/ HBD Venture Capital
* http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ Ubuntu Linux
* Video:
**
http://ktown.kde.org/akademy2005/unprocessed/Ubunt
uKUbuntu-MarkShuttleworth-video.ogg KUbuntu,
Akademy 2005
**
http://dc5video.debian.net/2005-07-15/distributed_
rev_control-by_Mark_Shuttleworth.mpeg Arch
Distributed Revision Control, Debconf 2005