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Why Do You Need License From Canonical To Create Derivatives?
sfcrazy writes "Canonical's requirement of a license for those creating Ubuntu derivatives is back in the news. Yesterday the Community Council published a statement about Canonical's licensing policies, but it's vague and it provides no resolution to the issue. It tells creators of derivative distros to avoid the press and instead talk to the Community Council (when they're not quick about responding). Now Jonathan Riddell of Kubuntu has come forth to say no one needs any license to create any derivative distro. So, the question remains: If Red Hat doesn't force a license on Oracle or CentOS, why does Canonical insist upon one?"
... they need the free press space.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
.. thinks FLOSS developers provide free labour to the advancement of its IP.
You don't need a license for the open-source portions of Ubuntu (which is almost everything). In fact, Canonical would probably be in violation of their license if they tried to impose this requirement on the Linux kernel or any GPL-licensed packages (they could impose it on BSD-licensed packages, and I'd have to research other licenses). What you'd need a license for is the Ubuntu logos and name and the like and the software Canonical wrote that isn't under an open-source license. It's the same as with RedHat, you need the license to use their logos and trademarks or you can use Fedora which doesn't have the licensed stuff in it. It's probably non-trivial to strip the trademarked and proprietary stuff out of the actual Ubuntu distribution, it'd probably be easier to go straight back to the Debian base distribution and work from there.
It should perhaps be noted that Red Hat and others including Apache do in fact have a similar policy. The strongest legally and I think most important part of Canonical's policy is as follows:
Any redistribution of MODIFIED versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical IF you are going to associate it with the [Canonical] Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks
(Emphasis mine). That's common sense - you can't call your version "Ubuntu", and Red Hat does the same. Centos is essentially RHEL with the Red Hat trademarks removed.
What may be different is that Canonical claims their specific arrangement of packages may be subject to copy rights. That is to say, each individual package is distributable under GPL, but they suggest that copying Unbuntu's own selection of groupings for desktop, server, etc., and the exact method of integration may be subject to Canonical's consent via their stated policy. That's an interesting position. They may or may not be correct that they have the legal right to claim some aspects of distribution as their own, apart from the packages used in the composition. It may also be a dickish move to assert that right in absence of a trademark issue.
CentOS maintains their own binary repositories where packages are built from publicly available RedHat source files , whereas Mint pulls binaries directly from Ubuntu's repositories which includes Canonical trademarks. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and other *buntu's are trademarks of Canonical, so there's no necessity for licensing.
Oh, you don't mean this derivative. Of course you can make derivatives, and all profits you make are yours. And all the losses will be paid out by the tax payers. wait, you aren't talking about that derivative either.
You can create derivative works, but the dolts from RIAA and MPAA take a dim view and claim copyright infringement on anything and everything, like for example looking at the Atlantic Ocean without proper license. Not the derivative either?
Man, if your derivative something obscure like building git specific distribution or ubuntu running under mono under cygwin X server or something, go ahead and derive it. No one will notice.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They can CLAIM anything. They can claim their shit doesn't stink. That doesn't make it so. GPL is GPL.
The OP was not talking about trademark, but about copyright on the selection of packages in an argument analagous-ish to one that a mashup can be copyrighted separately from the underlying songs. It's odd and untested but not on it's face definitely wrong under current law, dickishness notwithstanding
Mark is a good guy.
No. Anyone who would choose Unity as a user interface and distribute it to an unsuspecting world is NOT a good guy.
TFS> If Red Hat doesn't force a license on Oracle or CentOS, why does Canonical insist upon one?"
Actually the same happens to Red Hat; I recall CentOS refers to them indirectly as "an important Linux vendor", because it's prevented from using Red Hat branding.
Canonical is even being nicer and saying "we allow you to use the Ubuntu brand, but you have to ask and sign up a licence". Or, do what CentOS does and don't use our repos. If it's from source, I bet there would be no problem, but using pre-compiled binaries full of Ubuntu references might make someone demand Canonical take responsibility to e.g. support distros it does not own.
For Debian, things are somewhat different, because the GPL applies simply and there's no warranty whatsoever. Canonical and Red Hat though go a lot further regarding support, as I understand, and cannot allow any tarnishing of their reputation.
Remember, the GPL stablishes one must give source with the provided binaries; nobody is forced to give the binaries. Canonical is actually paying the bandwidth costs to help derived distros; and instead of just vetoing freeloaders, it just ask people to license its Ubuntu brand, probably just because they're so required by law (which mandates anyone to protect its trademarks or risk losing them).
For some reason, there's a concerted campaign happening to try to convince people that successul Open Source projects are not really open. It's an odd thing to pretend, and I'm wondering what their motive is?
Have you seen the near-identical accusations around Android being pushed to the front page here?
"One of Android's biggest draws is its roots in open source. While Android is technically very open, from a practical standpoint it's much more difficult for device makers to distance themselves from Google"
It's a very odd stance to take, so the question you have to ask yourself is: "Who benefits from this Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt?". Where does the money trail lead?
The strongest case Ubuntu has in my opinion is to state that the Ubuntu repositories in their binary form are only available to Carnonical authorized distibutions. The servers are theirs and they can dictate any terms of service they wish. Carnonical/Ubuntu still has to provide source per the GPL but not free binaries and bandwidth.
Side note: Slashdot is half following my system theme... the text is white but the background is white not grey, the end result being I cannot see what I type. Please forgive any typos :)
The parent has this right. Imagine I compile 1800's newspaper articles about trains into a small book. My choice of the articles is protected by copyright- after all, there are way too many to simply reprint, so the ones I choose show some generic creativity. This doesn't stop you from reprinting the very same articles in your collection, unless of course all you did was grab my book and add or subtract a couple of articles. Your own choice is protected by your own copyright, assuming you actually made your own choices instead of stole mine.
There's some GPL non-sequiturs above, too. The only way you can assign a copyright before it has been created is if it's a work made for hire, so there's no magic bullet that keeps package choices out of this regime.
For some reason, there's a concerted campaign happening to try to convince people that successul Open Source projects are not really open. It's an odd thing to pretend, and I'm wondering what their motive is?
Have you seen the near-identical accusations around Android being pushed to the front page here?
"One of Android's biggest draws is its roots in open source. While Android is technically very open, from a practical standpoint it's much more difficult for device makers to distance themselves from Google"
It's a very odd stance to take, so the question you have to ask yourself is: "Who benefits from this Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt?". Where does the money trail lead?
For some reason, there's a concerted campaign happening to try to convince people that successul Open Source projects are not really open. It's an odd thing to pretend, and I'm wondering what their motive is?
Have you seen the near-identical accusations around Android being pushed to the front page here?
"One of Android's biggest draws is its roots in open source. While Android is technically very open, from a practical standpoint it's much more difficult for device makers to distance themselves from Google"
It's a very odd stance to take, so the question you have to ask yourself is: "Who benefits from this Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt?". Where does the money trail lead?
Part of me agrees with you.
Part of me knows that both those statements are true, even if they are discouraging.
Both Android and Ubuntu are shades of closed source. They have very strong organizations behind them that are explicitly controlling the message they distribute. Mark Shuttleworth's corporate culture is one of arrogance and totalitarianism. Google has a longterm-orientated business strategy but still operates under a profit motive.
It's never troubling when these issues are highlighted the actual facts are what's troubling.
Let's take an analogy to help push my argument. While the Republican party is a big disparate tent that includes many different interest groups that agree on one random platform amongst the dozen general ones (i.e. small government, and/or state rights, and/or personal freedom vs domestic spying) pointing out internal sticking points does not instantly cause supporters to become a Progressive.
The same thing rings true of FOSS supporters. Pointing out that the largest Linux developers aren't pure FOSS doesn't make Linux users jump ship to a retarded OS like OSX.
Written in LXDE
OSX might be overpriced because of hardware, but to call it retarded goes to say that you haven't used Windows 8
As s friend of mine once taught me, “first class people hire first class people. second class people hire third class people”.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
That's because they own CentOS, and if they tried to force such a thing on Oracle, Oracle would own them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Lighten up. He's just fixing linux until it's broken. For you. And money, of course. Hey, fucking with free software 'til you can convince a few people that it belongs to you beats writing stuff from scratch.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
This does not indicate what Canonical actually wrote to Mint. That would be a very _reasonable_ concern. But without seeing the lette to Mint, or one from Mint about the issue, it could be about the standards for white space indentation of source code in Ubuntu software that is _not_ under a well known open source license. Some open source licenses have been known to have very, very foolish restrictions: the old "DJB" license had a restriction that modifying a single line of the code meant that you could only publish Dan Bernstein's source code, and diffs to apply your differences. You could not publish binaries.
Canonical's licensing has also gotten odd, and itself deserves suspicion. The new MIR display system is "sort of" licensed under GPLv3 but contributors are required to sign an agreement that "grants Canonical the right to relicense your contribution under their choice of license. Given Canonical's recent history of inserting spyware into their distribution, sending all search results of your local disk back to their upstream servers, Canonical and their Ubuntu software have earned the considerable suspicion they are being treated with.
Since some will try to make the comparison, in fact CentOS and Scientific Linux do not use RedHat branding. They are also not covered by RedHat service agreements. There is no conflict or issue. Mint similarly also does NOT use Ubuntu branding, trademarks, etc. So what is this about?
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.... Clem responded, "Money isn't a primary concern. Although the original fee was in the hundreds of thousands pounds, it was easily reduced to a single digit figure. The licensing aims at restricting what Mint can and cannot do, mostly in relation to the OEM market, to prevent Mint from competing with Canonical in front of the same commercial partners."
If this is indeed true, then Canonical is demanding the right to tell Mint where they could NOT offer their distribution (such as OEM's) . It is this aspect that would clearly and openly violate the GNU GPL, and is nothing more than a crude shakedown more worthy of our local mob.
They can CLAIM anything. They can claim their shit doesn't stink. That doesn't make it so. GPL is GPL.
And copyright law is copyright law which trumphs the GPL. If you make a photo book you can get a copyright on the selection and arrangement of photos that is separate from the copyright on the individual photo. In fact, they can be all public domain photos and you can still get a copyright on that particular mix. The GPL can't prevent them from being created, but they can control their use like the GPLv3 does:
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.
The GPLv2 just said that a "mere aggregate" is fine and left the door wide open on that one, the GPLv3 says a "mere aggregate" is fine if and only if you don't use the compilation copyright for anything. So there's a good chance that if Ubuntu did try anything using their compilation copyrights anyone with GPLv3 code could claim it's a license violation.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Canonical is within its right to require licenses for people wanting to make derivatives of its intellectual property. FOSS and the GPL doesn't prohibit that. The kicker is, though, what parts of Ubuntu's stack are actually IP of Canonical? Things like their software center would be and other parts they've developed, but the vast majority would not be. Likewise for the name and other branding. If you want to advertize that you are an Ubuntu derivative, then, you probably need to license it.
So, if you want to make a derivative of Ubuntu and not have to license it, then just leave out the Canonical specific stuff. OTOH, if you find that those things are important to your distro, then register for the license.
So long as in the end, when they WANT a license, money, promises, sex or whatever;
you can tell them to WANT as much as they can, in one hand and
shit as much as they can, in the other hand.Then instruct them to observe the realistic sum of their efforts, compare, contrast , analyze and extrapolate.
The bigger the fuss for the press , the better.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
My guess: Canonical is pissed that Mint gets more hits than they do on distrowatch. Hmmm, maybe it has to do with that yucky unity interface. Suck it up Canonical and compete with Mint!!!
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Isn't that something we learn in math?