When looking for hardware, I often try to find out if the manufacturer employs open source developers and things like that. I know Canonical has relations with a couple of big computer companies, but who, apart from Canonical, is supporting the community effort directly? Is there a list?
Ubuntu – Which big computer companies support the Ubuntu project financially
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Best Answer
I know of employees of the following companies who are tasked with improvements to Ubuntu as a primary job responsibility, including maintenance or delivery of software in the archive, bugfixing, and other development work performed on and in Ubuntu. This list is necessarily incomplete, as it is exceedingly likely that many folk have not decided to disclose their employment and/or job responsibilities to me (or I forgot). Some of these may not meet your definition of "big", others are indisputably so.
I am also aware of employees of many other firms who provide publicity or support services (magazine publishers, book publishers, event organisers, on- or off-site systems support services, deployment services, etc.) for Ubuntu or Ubuntu Derivatives (including the remixes typically deployed for pre-installed systems) who consider themselves to be part of the Ubuntu community, although their output is often not in the form of patches or uploads directly to Ubuntu.
Further, there are a number of companies that look favorably on contributions by their employees into Ubuntu, and whose staff hold significant positions within the Ubuntu community, but who have not explicitly tasked their staff with improvements to Ubuntu as a primary responsibility.
Beyond that, there exists a significant number of individual or small consultancies that provide services which sometimes include delivery or improvement of software in Ubuntu or delivery of Ubuntu into some environment, for which necessary modifications are applied directly to Ubuntu. While these are surely not "big", they not infrequently perform services for clients that meet most definitions of "big". As these relationships are typically confidential between the parties concerned, they may necessarily not be listed here.
Additionally, there is the list of companies that have commercial relationships with all those above, with the intent of delivering Ubuntu to users or supporting Ubuntu. While these companies may not be directly funding Ubuntu Development, without their assistance, few of the aforementioned firms would be as interested in funding that development.