While Silber is the CEO, Shuttleworth is still the owner of the company. If he wants to continue pushing Ubuntu, I doubt Canonical's goals wouldn't be aligned.

While Silber is the CEO, Shuttleworth is still the owner of the company. If he wants to continue pushing Ubuntu, I doubt Canonical's goals wouldn't be aligned. And there's also the Ubuntu Foundation, created specifically for the reason of continuing to push Ubuntu distro after Shuttleworth steps away. So from that point, I don't think Ubuntu is in jeopardy. Another point is whether Ubuntu would become a (greater) channel for distributing/marketing Canonical's money-making products to the wide public (e.g. Ubuntu One), and whether Canonical would push so hard as to _negatively_ impact Ubuntu itself.