> There's almost no downside here, at worst you get the updates as quickly as you would in any other distro. There could easily be downside. It's free for 5 m

> There's almost no downside here, at worst you get the updates as quickly as you would in any other distro. There could easily be downside. It's free for 5 machines for now. However, the big risk IMO is if relying on Ubuntu for security patches becomes a normal thing. In fact, it could even go as far as having Ubuntu make deals with software developers to maintain security patches for software past a certain lifecycle (ex: 2-3 years). By doing that, Ubuntu could discourage projects from running their own LTS programs and all of a sudden Ubuntu would become the only viable LTS distro. Open source means nothing. Whoever controls the development effort is the one who decides how open software really is. If Ubuntu manages security patches for all the LTS packages, the only choice of LTS distro is Ubuntu and there's no way on earth they'll keep any kind of significant free offer available if that happens.