I doubt that I am alone in sensing some xenophobia here! In any case South African corporate law isn't significantly different from US corporate law, in that companies whose stock is publicly traded have to disclose all financial information, while those that are privately owned don't have to disclose quite as much. However, to set your mind more at rest, Canonical is based in Europe (the Isle of Man), with most of their executives located in London UK - not South Africa. This means that you only needed to have taken the time to do a little homework to find out the facts you appear to be looking for.

The basic question you're raising is one that has been asked about almost every Linux distribution around, at one time or another, and it's a valid one. If the software is free, how do they make any money? The answer is of course that the Linux distro acts as a trojan horse for a whole host of services. In the case of Ubuntu, as it says on their web site "Canonical revenues come from its commercial support contracts and engineering services. Canonical offers global, 24x7 support services to customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to schools and research institutes to governments." That's pretty much the same story as for Red Hat, Novell and all the rest. As to how successful Canonical have been or will be, I'll let you do the homework and make the calculations, if that's what interests you. Until then I'm afraid I don't see a lot of substance in your post.

And BTW, I'm not an Ubuntu user, employee or shareholder, so I have no vested interests here.