No License Needed For Kubuntu Derivatives

[GreatEmerald]

On a fresh install of Mint I did:

$: locate ubuntu

$: locate canonical

Hah, the former should totally return "http://ubuntu.com/" and the latter "London, United Kingdom"

[curaga]

Old jokes anyone?

$ whatis microsoft
microsoft: nothing appropriate

[dee.]

Why are people posting here as if all binary packages are built from copyleft GPL source? Binary packages that are built from BSD source can be licensed in any way that the builder wants. You can even make it closed source. Clement Lefebvre was wrong - the fact that compilation is a deterministic process is irrelevant. The Kubuntu maintainer is wrong; compiling a source package does give you additional rights - it creates a derivative work, and for non-copyleft sources that derivative work can indeed be licensed differently, it can even be closed source. You can absolutely take BSD source package, compile it, and sell the resulting binary as proprietary software.

Yes and that all would be relevant if all of the packages Canonical was distributing were BSD-licensed. If they want to enforce these terms, they need to remove any and all GPL-licensed software from their repositories.

And even then, they couldn't do anything about mirrors. Mint could just use the non-Canonical-hosted mirrors and remove the Canonical base repository from their distro.

Having said all of that, it doesn't matter here, because both Ubuntu and Red Hat allow their binary packages to be freely redistributed

I guess you haven't heard the news. Canonical wants Mint to sign a license in order to use the actual binaries in their repositories. Not a license to use a trademark. This license includes terms that prevent Mint from competing against Canonical on the OEM market.

[chrisb]

I guess you haven't heard the news. Canonical wants Mint to sign a license in order to use the actual binaries in their repositories. Not a license to use a trademark.

The trademark is contained inside the binary packages. This is a similar situation to CentOS and Red Hat, or Firefox and IceWeasel. If Mint want to ship packages that contain the Ubuntu trademark then they need a licence. That's why CentOS recompile the packages and strip out the trademarks. Debian do the same for Iceweasel.

It seems that there is some confusion about exactly what the licence that the Mint guy was talking about was for, and he hasn't clarified this or released the original emails. It's possible he just misunderstood (he did claim deterministic process output can't be copyrighted, which is wrong). Ubuntu packages are freely redistributable, but trademarks aren't, and also Ubuntu is under no obligation to public host the packages that Mint uses. So they could be taking about a licence for hosting, but my money is on a trademark licence (ie the same licence that all of the official Ubuntu derivatives already have)

[dee.]

The trademark is contained inside the binary packages. This is a similar situation to CentOS and Red Hat, or Firefox and IceWeasel. If Mint want to ship packages that contain the Ubuntu trademark then they need a licence. That's why CentOS recompile the packages and strip out the trademarks. Debian do the same for Iceweasel.

It seems that there is some confusion about exactly what the licence that the Mint guy was talking about was for, and he hasn't clarified this or released the original emails. It's possible he just misunderstood (he did claim deterministic process output can't be copyrighted, which is wrong). Ubuntu packages are freely redistributable, but trademarks aren't, and also Ubuntu is under no obligation to public host the packages that Mint uses. So they could be taking about a licence for hosting, but my money is on a trademark licence (ie the same licence that all of the official Ubuntu derivatives already have)

Canonical doesn't host all their files themselves. If it was only an issue of hosting, Mint could use any of the mirrors hosting the same packages.

Trademarks were never mentioned in the original article, and Canonical can't have any trademark claim on packages of software that aren't made by them or trademarked by them. Simply compiling software that someone else owns the copyright for doesn't give you a copyright nor trademark claim over said software. And simply mentioning being derived from Ubuntu doesn't count as usage/violation of trademark, as it falls under nominative use. Also, Mint doesn't use any of the trademark Ubuntu software such as Unity or Mir.

[chrisb]

Canonical doesn't host all their files themselves. If it was only an issue of hosting, Mint could use any of the mirrors hosting the same packages.

Likewise, if it were only a copyright issue, then Mint could use any of the mirrors. But at the moment their product directly and automatically connects to Canonical's servers, and that means Canonical is free to invite them to enter into a licence agreement for that usage. Bandwidth isn't free, and there is no GPL obligation that states Canonical has to provide a public server for other companies. Canonical are free to implement any licensing arrangement for their own servers, or to implement technical measures to restrict access to Ubuntu users only, if that is what they want. Note that Mint actually makes money from licensing the MintBox, so it is rather odd for their hardware to rely on servers owned by a third party over which they have no control.

Trademarks were never mentioned in the original article, and Canonical can't have any trademark claim on packages of software that aren't made by them or trademarked by them.

The original article didn't say precisely what the licence was for, but is a fact that some of the Ubuntu packages contain the Ubuntu trademark, and it is a fact that Ubuntu licences it's official derivatives to use those trademarks. It's also a fact that failure to enforce a trademark can lead to losing it. Given those facts, it's reasonable to conclude that Canonical's legal team would require a non-official derivative to licence trademarks that were in any of the packages that they install.

[Luke]

Than Mint should strip out any Ubuntu trademarks and be done with it

<snip>The issue with Mint is that it isn't an official Ubuntu derivative, so they don't already have a licence to redistribute packages containing trademarks, so they either need to get a licence or rebuild those packages. No big deal, as apparently they were offered a licence for a single digit fee. Btw they would be in exactly the same situation with Debian, Debian trademark policy also requires permission if you want to, for example, put "Debian" on a splash screen, or anything else that could suggest any endorsement or an association.

Already Mint uses mostly their own artwork. They should simply get a list of all packages containing any artwork or images trademarked by Ubuntu and replace them with the equivalents from Debian or rebuild them. If they stripped out all trademarked material, Canonical wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If they whine about redistribution of a trademark-free package distributed under the GPL (lots of these in Ubuntu), than they will surely lose-and that would be the biggest story on gpl-violations.org in years.

[dee.]

The original article didn't say precisely what the licence was for

Clem claims he has been asked by Canonical's legal department to license the binary packages used by Ubuntu.

When I asked what Mint's plans were concerning the licensing deal Clem answered, "We don't think the claim is valid (i.e. that you can copyright the compilation of source into a binary, which is a deterministic process).

[Pajn]

Trademarks were never mentioned in the original article, and Canonical can't have any trademark claim on packages of software that aren't made by them or trademarked by them. Simply compiling software that someone else owns the copyright for doesn't give you a copyright nor trademark claim over said software. And simply mentioning being derived from Ubuntu doesn't count as usage/violation of trademark, as it falls under nominative use. Also, Mint doesn't use any of the trademark Ubuntu software such as Unity or Mir.

Ubuntu themselves says the problem is the trademark. But I guess everyone should trust you instead?

http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2014/02/13/community-council-statement-on-canonical-package-licensing/

That would still be open source, it wouldnt change anything. The only thing that would change would be that if you want to sell something or whatever, you must write it yourself, because now you are not writing anything, you just take other products and put it together.

As that limits how you can use the program, that changes everything. You can read the Open Source Definition here http://opensource.org/osd-annotated
and you can also Google on Aladdin Free Public License and see how it's not an approved open source license.

[dee.]

Ubuntu themselves says the problem is the trademark. But I guess everyone should trust you instead?
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2014/02/13/...age-licensing/

Except they don't actually say it. They don't say anything directly about the Mint situation there, just lots of empty marketing-talk and corporate-speak.

At this time, we are in agreement that one of the keys to Ubuntu?s success is in providing a well-designed, reliable and enjoyable experience to all of our users, whether they are using Ubuntu on a desktop, a phone or in the cloud. To that end it is critical that when people see ?Ubuntu?, it adequately represents the software that we all build and stand behind. This is as important to our individual reputations as much as to the reputation of the project as a whole. Trademarks and Copyrights are the legal tools provided to us for safeguarding those reputations, and it?s part of Canonical?s mandate within the Ubuntu project to use those tools appropriately, balancing the needs of all those involved in making Ubuntu. Canonical already provides a license for the use of these to the Ubuntu project and all of its distributions, including Ubuntu itself as well as those flavors that are developed in collaboration with it.

Notice the clever doublespeak? They make it seem like they're addressing the actual issue, while keeping it very vague and not stating anything definite.

Nowhere in that article, not even once, do they actually clearly address or clarify what the license deal with Mint is actually about. Seems fishy to me.