Mark Richard Shuttleworth, born 18 September 1973 is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as the second self-funded space tourist and the first-ever African in space.
In 1995 he founded Thawte, a company that specialised in digital certificates and Internet security and four years later sold the company to VeriSign, earning R3.5 billion. Following which he started Canonical Ltd. to market commercial support and related services for his Ubuntu operating system, free and open source software.

Fast, free and incredibly easy to use, the Ubuntu operating system powers millions of desktop PCs, laptops and servers around the world. Ubuntu will work with your existing PC files, printers, cameras, music players and smartphones – and it comes with thousands of free apps.

Ubuntu is a Southern African ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other.