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How is it protecting their brand to say that I am not allowed to redistribute the libpcap0.8 binary package that they built, written by other developers, licens

by lambda 11y ago

How is it protecting their brand to say that I am not allowed to redistribute the libpcap0.8 binary package that they built, written by other developers, licensed under the 3-clause BSD license, packaged by Debian developers, and the only reference to Ubuntu is the substitution of "Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>, Original-Maintainer: Romain Francoise <rfrancoise@debian.org>" in the binary package details, that they automatically add when they rebuild the package on their infrastructure? That sounds more like "taking the work of others and trying to pass it off as their own" rather than "protecting their brand." No one involved has a problem with branding guidelines that require replacing graphics, strings, and other branding information that shows up in user-visible locations. The problem is the weird and vague rules that Canonical imply to mean that anyone who redistributes packages from Ubuntu have to rebuild all binary packages (with an exception for GPL'd packages if that requirement would conflict with the GPL licensing which doesn't allow adding extra restrictions). Because of restrictions like this, third parties who create forks of Ubuntu are left in a weird legal limbo. It can be solved by doing a full rebuild of all packages, but it is a lot of work and very error prone to set up a build system and rebuild every package. Rebuilding only the ones necessary for removing user-visible branding and whatever local changes are necessary is much simpler. The other problem is that this policy was imposed relatively recently (in 2013). The previous trademark policy did not mention needing to rebuild all binary packages. So people who were relying on the earlier trademark policy are left in the lurch.

Mikeb85 11y ago
You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". It's basically just clarification concerning the GPL and trademark law. Software licenses are legal documents, they're binding as far as the interpretation of the laws of the jurisdiction.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". That's not what Canonical's policy says. What you described sounds like a perfectly sensible policy. However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Canonical's policy also does not limit itself to functioning under trademark law alone; as written, it functions under any mechanism Canonical has to add restrictions, which would include copyright law.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    > However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Which is perfectly acceptable. Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing...
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      > Which is perfectly acceptable. It's perfectly legal, which is a different thing. The entire premise of this article is that it isn't "perfectly acceptable", and causes serious practical problems. > Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing... CentOS goes further than trademark law requires, and the nature of their project means they need to rebuild everything anyway. While I don't know anything about SUSE's trademark policy, Red Hat has a far less restrictive one.
    - lambda 11y ago
      No, Red Hat and SuSE do not apply such onerous restrictions. Canonical says that you must rebuild the binaries, even if those binaries don't contain any Canonical trademarks. Red Hat merely requires that you remove the trademarks in the actual branding packages; they even explicitly state which packages those are, to make it very clear. From their trademark guidelines (https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf): You must modify the files identified as REDHAT-LOGOS and ANACONDA-IMAGES so as to remove all use of images containing the “Red Hat” trademark or Red Hat’s Shadowman logo. Note that mere deletion of these files may corrupt the software. Canonical requires that you rebuild every binary package in the distro (or at least, they don't qualify at all which binary packages have to be rebuilt when saying that you must rebuild binary packages). This is a far different, and much more onerous, requirement. Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries. This does not affect your rights under any open source licence applicable to any of the components of Ubuntu. If you need us to approve, certify or provide modified versions for redistribution you will require a licence agreement from Canonical, for which you may be required to pay. For further information, please contact us (as set out below). Any attempt to clarify with Canonical to determine whether they just mean rebuilding those packages that contain branding, or how this interacts with packages that are not covered by copyleft licenses (that forbid applying extra restrictions like this recompilation requirement), have been met with silence (at least publicly). The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have put out statements on this matter, criticizing Canonical for this vague policy: https://www.fsf.org/news/canonical-updated-licensing-terms https://www.fsf.org/news/canonical-updated-licensing-terms https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/ Whether this requirement is actually enforceable is another question. Given that Canonical ships copyright notices saying that the software may be distributed in source or binary form, and the only use of the trademarks is in some ancillary metadata on the packages rather than included in the packages themselves, it's unclear if this would actually be considered infringing on their trademark. But the FUD caused by their refusal to clarify this point means that it's a risk for anyone to try doing so; it's possible that a court could decide that it is likely to cause confusion, even in just the form of ancillary metadata in binary packages.

by lambda 11y ago

Mikeb85 11y ago

You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". It's basically just clarification concerning the GPL and trademark law. Software licenses are legal documents, they're binding as far as the interpretation of the laws of the jurisdiction.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". That's not what Canonical's policy says. What you described sounds like a perfectly sensible policy. However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Canonical's policy also does not limit itself to functioning under trademark law alone; as written, it functions under any mechanism Canonical has to add restrictions, which would include copyright law.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  > However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Which is perfectly acceptable. Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing...
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    > Which is perfectly acceptable. It's perfectly legal, which is a different thing. The entire premise of this article is that it isn't "perfectly acceptable", and causes serious practical problems. > Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing... CentOS goes further than trademark law requires, and the nature of their project means they need to rebuild everything anyway. While I don't know anything about SUSE's trademark policy, Red Hat has a far less restrictive one.
  - lambda 11y ago
    No, Red Hat and SuSE do not apply such onerous restrictions. Canonical says that you must rebuild the binaries, even if those binaries don't contain any Canonical trademarks. Red Hat merely requires that you remove the trademarks in the actual branding packages; they even explicitly state which packages those are, to make it very clear. From their trademark guidelines (https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf): You must modify the files identified as REDHAT-LOGOS and ANACONDA-IMAGES so as to remove all use of images containing the “Red Hat” trademark or Red Hat’s Shadowman logo. Note that mere deletion of these files may corrupt the software. Canonical requires that you rebuild every binary package in the distro (or at least, they don't qualify at all which binary packages have to be rebuilt when saying that you must rebuild binary packages). This is a far different, and much more onerous, requirement. Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries. This does not affect your rights under any open source licence applicable to any of the components of Ubuntu. If you need us to approve, certify or provide modified versions for redistribution you will require a licence agreement from Canonical, for which you may be required to pay. For further information, please contact us (as set out below). Any attempt to clarify with Canonical to determine whether they just mean rebuilding those packages that contain branding, or how this interacts with packages that are not covered by copyleft licenses (that forbid applying extra restrictions like this recompilation requirement), have been met with silence (at least publicly). The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have put out statements on this matter, criticizing Canonical for this vague policy: https://www.fsf.org/news/canonical-updated-licensing-terms https://www.fsf.org/news/canonical-updated-licensing-terms https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/ Whether this requirement is actually enforceable is another question. Given that Canonical ships copyright notices saying that the software may be distributed in source or binary form, and the only use of the trademarks is in some ancillary metadata on the packages rather than included in the packages themselves, it's unclear if this would actually be considered infringing on their trademark. But the FUD caused by their refusal to clarify this point means that it's a risk for anyone to try doing so; it's possible that a court could decide that it is likely to cause confusion, even in just the form of ancillary metadata in binary packages.