Sounds like a good open source business model to me. If OVH were distributing it exactly the way UbuntuCo was distributing it, eg. as an ISO on a http/ftp site

Sounds like a good open source business model to me. If OVH were distributing it exactly the way UbuntuCo was distributing it, eg. as an ISO on a http/ftp site then I don't think UbuntuCo would have the legal footing to do this. But by acting as a VAR hosting provider, with provisioning guis, etc. then OVH have changed the product, and can no longer be a free rider. Since it's not exactly Ubuntu anymore, it stands to reason that hosting companies should pay to license the trademark Ubuntu or rebrand it like the CentOS guys did.