Don't be ridiculous -- Canonical has taken control of Ubuntu development and now they have a reputation for being authoritarian and secretive. There are fewer ways to alienate the open-source community than that and yet Ubuntu's popularity soars.
The more critical people are of Canonical, the more fervent Ubuntu supporters become. "How will they make money" will be parroted just as loudly, if not more-so.
And Canonical has GPL'd everything they've done. What proprietary bits has Canonical added? Free software isn't some hippie co-operative - it's about the ability to freely modify software the way you see fit. If Canonical's changes were worthless, people wouldn't adopt them. But Ubuntu is #1...
Hah. I'd wager that in real world installs Ubuntu has at least 20x-50x the installs (Wikimedia statistics support this assertion), never mind Ubuntu server installs.
How many people ever visit Distrowatch (the only statistic on the web that supports the idea that Mint > Ubuntu) once they settle on a distro?
I've yet to see this anywhere but numbers on the Internet. I hear people talking about Ubuntu, I see people using Ubuntu, and I see computers coming pre-loaded with Ubuntu. I've never seen anyone using Mint, heard anyone talking about Mint, or see machines pre-loaded with Mint.
I love Ubuntu. So do the 20 or so other people I know that use Linux--I have not heard of a single person sticking with mint; a few have used it for a bit and gone back (not sure why---I should ask). I have never used Mint myself, maybe it is great, I am just reporting the numbers I have seen.
The more critical people are of Canonical, the more fervent Ubuntu supporters become. "How will they make money" will be parroted just as loudly, if not more-so.