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Mark Shuttleworth Apologizes for Trademark Action Against Fix Ubuntu
A few days ago, the operator of Fix Ubuntu received a threatening letter from Canonical commanding him to cease using the Ubuntu name or logo. Last night, Mark Shuttleworth posted an update noting that it shouldn't have happened, and also apologizing for calling opponents of Mir the open source tea party. "In order to make the amount of [trademark related] correspondence manageable, we have a range of standard templates for correspondence. They range from the 'we see you, what you are doing is fine, here is a license to use the name and logo which you need to have, no need for further correspondence,' through 'please make sure you state you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of the company or the product,' to the 'please do not use the logo without permission, which we are not granting unless you actually certify those machines,' and 'please do not use Ubuntu in that domain to pretend you are part of the project when you are not.' Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site. Now, that was not a decision based on policy or guidance; as I said, Canonical’s trademark policy is unusually generous relative to corporate norms in explicitly allowing for this sort of usage. It was a mistake, and there is no question that the various people in the line of responsibility know and agree that it was a mistake. It was no different, however, than a bug in a line of code, which I think most developers would agree happens to the best of us. It just happened to be, in that analogy, a zero-day remote root bug. ... On another, more personal note, I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does. That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with vocal non-technical criticism of work that Canonical does (hello there!)."
Sucks to be "the new guy"; you always get blamed for dumb mistakes by "the experienced guy".
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What a lame dodge at an apology.
He didn't expected such a fuss about it, right now we can see the one and only Mark Shuttleworth doing damage control.
Poor guy has to take blame for your dumb policies.
At least you've (hopefully) learned.
"My work here is done."
oh my, shutterworth rage, thats odd, well u gotta defend what u made
Seems fair. Apology accepted.
To further illustrate the problem with review of trademark concerns at Ubuntu, several years ago I contacted their legal department with a request to be permitted to use the Ubuntu logo, alongside those of several other notable open source Linux and BSD distributions, for printing on the sails of small kites for sale at the cost of production. The objective was to create an opportunity for people to ask "hey, what's that logo represent" and engage youngsters in a discussion on open source operating systems. The request was summarily denied with some hand waving about brand protection and value to the company. Oh well.
Write failed: Broken pipe
That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!)
(hops into asbestos flame-retardant suit) (closes the blast doors) This presumes that very many people give a shit that it's offensive to them. Their politics are not just offensive, but dangerously naive, in the opinion of the majority. Their brand of politics managed to shut down the entire government for several weeks because they disagreed with the details of a single law. So mothers with children and their kids went hungry because no food stamps. Government workers were furloughed by the hundreds of thousands... and by furloughed I mean, they just stopped getting paid. And couldn't get unemployment. So no, please... be offensive.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Ok, so he does not throw their legal team under the bus and that is admirable. The knee-jerk reaction is ussualy to kick some dunce and put the blame on them. But the main point is not being adressed, why is this "feature" turned on by default? Grow a pair and just say that it is going to stay due to finacial reasons.
Canonical has already shown it's stripes as the Microsoft of the Linux world, ignoring the voices of their users, covertly collecting data about them and bullying others into accepting their standards.
No, there's no way to undo the damage, Mark Shuttleworth. Your hand 's been played and you cannot take the cards back.
I have one to sell you if you believe him. And i will toss in a bag of extremely rare muffler bearings.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you'd like to talk to the FixUbuntu owner, they're in the #ubuntu-offtopic channel on freenode
Between that and "erm, you already trust us with root" (I don't, by the way), Shuttleworth isn't giving people much reason NOT to run Debian lately.
Never shit where you eat!
"several years ago I contacted their legal department with a request to be permitted to use the Ubuntu logo .. for printing on the sails of small kites for sale at the cost of production"
Ubuntu T-shirts & Shirts
I had the idea of making a stupid comment about how his critique had been offensive to the Tea Party, and here is it at the end of the blurb! Well done. This is worth a shuttle.
An apology that blocks further discussion. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
Hello there, jerk
Nice to see a solid apology from Mark. I think a frank apology in non corpo-speak can make the world of difference. It takes an adult to hold up their hands and say they fucked up in public.
n/t
He should really go into politics. They acted like dicks, and now he's doing damage control...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I had already moved off Ubuntu and back to Debian.
That whole switch to Unity kinda irked me.
So I did something about, and now I am back in trusty 'ole Gnome Classic.
And no, I'm not afraid of or against change.
I actually really like the new version of Gnome and was getting used to Unity.
But I use my computers for work day in and day out.
And neither of those desktops are near stable enough for what I do.
Both frequently become unresponsive and leave me unable to navigate apps.
Then I have to go into a console with alt+f(x) and kill the display manager or log out and back in.
Which doesn't look good to executives when you are attempting to demonstrate new products.
And yes, I am more than competent enought to install Gnome Classic in Ubuntu.
But the only reason I ever switched to Ubuntu was for the quick and dirty wireless support.
With Wheezy, all my wireless woes seem to have past and I'm not constantly burdened by a "let's try this" mentality.
My desktop "just works" again.
Heh, kinda funny I switched to the core distribution from Ubuntu so the thing would "just work".
Mark Shuttleworth, you go to hell, you rigid, small minded twat.
I always admire how those who take the moral high-ground regarding insults, always manage to avoid using insults themselves!
Oh well, at least Mark Shuttleworth apologised.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Mark Shuttleworth, you go to hell, you rigid, small minded twat.
I'm sure comments like that will help the situation.
why didn't you just stay in space, shuttle dude?
They should try a setup like Hybryde Linux provides:
"Hybryde Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop. Its most unusual feature is an option to switch rapidly between multiple desktop environments and window manager without logging out - the list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode), KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. This is achieved via a highly customizable Hy-menu, which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. All open applications are carried to any of the available desktops. The system offers an interesting way to work fluidly in a multi-desktop environment."
http://www.hybryde.org/
Let the users choose.
In business there is the adage that to be successful, you need to be number one or number two. Canonical aspires to be number two to RedHat and has a long way to go - they have less than 10% of the employees and a tiny, tiny fraction of the revenue (30 M in 2009 vs 1130 M in 2012) .
To a business, the protection of the brand is of the utmost importance. One can reasonably assume that the apology may be based on the decision that Fix Ubuntu is not an economic threat but losing the support of the Linux community is.
Is his name Tibor?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The summary is wrong on two points. The legal letter was not threatening and it did not command any action. The letter was very polite and nicely requested the blog's author make some minor changes, including changing the site's name. This is pretty standard stuff where trademark is concerned and it could have been a lot worse. Maybe it was kind of a dick move by the legal department, but hardly the big deal people are making it out to be.
I thought the test of the new guy always involved sending an email claiming to be a representative of the prince of Nigeria (you know, to test e-mail and network connectivity, or something)
The sincerity of an apology is inversely proportional to its word count.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
If I had any mod points left I would award them to you.
Instead... please, accept all of the internets I have acquired.
It takes a big man to apologize.
I want to thank Mark Shuttleworth for stepping up and doing the rightthing.
Now your a jelly fish.
Class is always a good thing to exhibit. (Hi! Mark!)
...Captain Needa!
> So mothers with children and their kids went hungry because no food stamps.
Whoever you've been getting your "facts" from has been lying to you. That's assuming you're not the liar, of course. Food stamps never stopped. Obama did threaten to stop payments IF the shutdown continued into November (while continuing "green" payouts to campaign contributors).
You may have noticed that DEMOCRAT senators, leaders of the presidents own party, are currently acknowledging the republicans were right - healthcare.gov isn't ready and the mandate needs to be delayed for individuals, just as it's been delayed for unions.
By using the Tea Party as a pejorative, Shuttleworlth alienated many people here in the US. I'm not a member of the Tea Party, but it seems to me that they are about responsible government behavior and not simply some kind of fringe minority holding up the “correct” majority.
I appreciate the fact he said it was a mistake, but the fact remains that he very easily jumped on the popular press bandwagon against them. It showed a side of him that is disappointing as I normally considered him more thoughtful.
To be fair, you have to admit that it was far more insulting to the Wayland proponents to be lumped in with the vicious criminals that infest the so-called Tea Party than it could have been the other way around.
Teabaggers have very much earned far worse insults, including calling them seditious conspirators (which would be pretty darned accurate if you ask me). Wealthy profiteers are using "libertarian" propaganda to promote rabid deregulation, using those inconsiderate (and arguably racist) degenerates to obstruct everything that disagrees with their irresponsible attitudes toward not just the government, but their own duties to society. The fact that they choose to turn a blind eye to this malicious indifference to the condition of society proves that they merit far worse than insults.
Wayland proponents, on the other hand, have maybe been a little overzealous in representing their side in that effort. I say that remove the plank out of the world's eye first. Then, we'll be able to see more clearly to remove the speck.
Can we all hug now? :-)
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
This was wrong and there needs to be criminal charges against companies that do this. "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it.
Besides, run Debian, you'll realize how much Ubuntu doesn't contribute.
Not sure Mark gets it. The site isn't really a "sucks" site - the message seems to be rather more "Ubuntu is worth using, but if you don't like how it handles your privacy here's how to fix the issue". Over-sensitive to criticism, methinks.
As a Ubuntu user I don't understand why Canonical will sell my data to third-parties but not give me the option to pay for the software.
I've already paid $250 for VMWare Workstation and $100 for Windows 8 OEM as a guest OS. I'd happily pay $100 to Canonical for Ubuntu if they would even give me the option in return for not selling my search data.
He still needs to apologize for that stinking turd Unity.
-- Will program for bandwidth
to put up Barrycades
First, they're called barricades
Barrycade n. [Alteration of "barricade" after "Barry", nickname for Barack] A barricade associated with a U.S. government shutdown during the administration of President Barack Obama, whose political reputation was widely considered to ride on the success of a health care statute that was so abhorrent to the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives that they were willing to shut down the government over it.
Mark Shuttleworth, you go to blazes, you rigid, small minded twit. I say that because your vapid insult works both ways. You insult those who rationally oppose the fragmentation caused by Mir. You insult the huge number of sincere tea party advocates with your insulting, condescending, stupid metaphor. And by the way, before you insult ME, I would feel exactly the same if you said "Socialist Workers Party", "Communist Party", or "Libertarian Party".
Actually, your closed mind is its own reward. You're not an issues, merits kind of guy, are you? Now see what you've got me doing? I did really see a tremendous lot of value and good coming from Canonical until fairly recently.
It takes an adult to hold up their hands and say they fucked up in public.
What does it take to blame someone else?
A bug in code is something that is the result of something overlooked, or perhaps the result of laziness (can't be bothered to handle something properly in unlikely conditions). However sending out a template letter requires somebody to make a conscious decision to do it, so is certainly not a bug.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
I like how he was, but wasn't really apologizing about the tea party comment.
a) you can turn off the whole transfer of data to 3rd parties thing. for free
b) funny you should ask about paying for Ubuntu. Not only can you do that, but you can say where you would like the money to go. Just go to ubuntu.com and go through the motions to download an image. Right before the download, you will get the a screen to pay-what-you-think-it's-worth.
Anyway, it's hard to believe that you didn't know about a). Regardless, have a nice day!
lolwut. Neither Wayland or Mir have been launched to a real distro yet and there is no fragmentation. Why would you even be upset about this, it's like getting upset about llvm vs gcc.
Only closed minded person I see is you. Shitting on a company for making their own display manager that's open source, shame on you.
Just go away the Free/Open Software community doesn't need people like you who spend your days critiquing others while contributing zero. Your type are all about creating issues and political dramas where none exist.