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?"

Comments

License needed only for specific things

[Todd Knarr]

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.

Re:License needed only for specific things

[Ynot_82]

It sounds like Canonical are just a bunch of a**holes.

How is this any different to what Mozilla or Redhat do?

It's brand protection.
They don't want some shody fork that's poorly designed to use their trademarked name and possibly impacting their reputation.

Billuntu - Packed with malware
Jilluntu - It wipes your disk without confirmation

Re:License needed only for specific things

[phantomfive]

Same reason the name "Linux" is not open source. Trademarks are an indication of brand, of saying, "this product is made by us, therefore it is good." Or "this product is made by us, therefore it is cheap." Or luxurious, or whatever. If you know anything about microphones, you can be sure that a Manley mic will be top quality and clear. An AudioTechnica mic will have pretenses of grandeur.

And if it's labeled Ubuntu, you can be confident it will completely disregard the desires of the end-user, and be ignorant of the Unix Way; but at least the wifi drivers will work.

Re:License needed only for specific things

[icebike]

Stranglehold?

Seems a bit much if you ask me. You can use every bit of Ubuntu except a fee trademarks and logo s.
Just the same way Ubuntu uses every bit of Debian.

Every distro has a few branding features, always separate, never hidden, that you can neither need, nor would you want if you were starting your own distros.

But you have missed the point of the story: Ubuntu doesn't actually claim you can't use their distro to base your own distro on. All they really claim is you can't use their branding.

1 difference between most, including RH, and Canon

[raymorris]

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.

There's a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

All derivatives are not the same.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You can create as many derivatives as you want. Absolutely. no limits (so punny, ha haa) as long as the function is continuous there. Of course after a certain number of times it will be zero for polynomials..

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.