If that's true, they shouldn't be surprised Ubuntu wants a license fee... it says so in their trademark policy:
- You can make changes to Ubuntu for your own personal use or for your organisation’s own internal use.
- You can redistribute Ubuntu, but only where there has been no modification to it.
- 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.
http://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/intellectual-...
Ubuntu is a trusted open source platform. To maintain that trust we need to manage the use of Ubuntu and the components within it very carefully. This way, when people use Ubuntu, or anything bearing the Ubuntu brand, they can be assured that it will meet the standards they expect.
Could not figure out why Docker would not install on a stock 14.04 bare metal server from OVH.
Turns out it was their custom kernel.
With a little flag in the corner giving the option to install the stock kernel. Trying to do that gave no end of problems. So reverted to the stock Proxmox, and ran my 14.04 in a VM that uses pretty much all the resources.
True, it cost me a small %age in overhead, but it was the easiest/quickest fix.
Looks like everyone took their pitchforks out too soon.
Probably using OpenVZ virtualization software which forces them to have the same kernel in host and guests.
How much to they pay Debian for using a modified version of Debian?
If OVH wants to take Ubuntu and call it OVH Linux, they can do that.. and they won't need to pay Ubuntu anything.
OVH is being asked to pay for a license because they refuse to rename it, and they refuse to distribute it unmodified.
OVH could also distribute it unmodified, and then package their changes into a deb package that they tell customers to install. Or they could simply allocate severs depending on which OS a person selects (so Ubuntu will work unmodified).
The fact is, they have several options to comply with Ubuntu's trademark policies.. but they've chosen to do none of those things.
"Re: Debian images on Microsoft Azure cloud" https://lists.debian.org/debian-cloud/2015/11/msg00099.html
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and I'm not affiliated with Debian (other than being a long-time user).
See also:
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/OfficialImages https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud
and more generally:
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Trademark
[ed: As for the "upcomming policy" mentioned in the email linked, I think this is still an ongoing process, but it more or less boils down to the wiki-pages linked. IIRC one of the issues with the initial Azure effort was that the scripts generating the images needed to run on Azure - so couldn't readily be re-created by just anyone.]
My bet it's the trust/'brand' thing rather than monetization - allowing anyone to make 3rd party modifications to your product and passing it off as the original/pristine version is a bad idea in any market. Heck - even Mozilla ran into this with Debian when Debian was maintaining and applying their own parallel patchset on top of Firefox. Debian snarkily called their version 'IceWeasel'[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_...
If you modify the images, you can still redistribute them, you just can't call it Ubuntu.
This has some problems, some of which Matthew Garrett has explored in more details.
But generally, imo, it's a useful tool to prevent clueless vps/cloud providers modifying Ubuntu images and breaking them and tarnishing the Ubuntu name (which has happened repeatedly, usually breaking security).
That's why the Pepsi Challenge can name Coca-Cola directly as the product that people prefer. Certainly Coca-Cola would sue them if they had any legal grounds to stand on, and they do not.
Is OVH using "Ubuntu" to refer to something other than an Ubuntu-sourced distro that they are making available on their servers? Are they substituting an OVH-tweaked derivative and calling it Ubuntu? If so, then Canonical has a plausible case. If not, it's an overanxious, overpaid and undereducated lawyer's assistant writing letters by the hour.
Yes they are, they are shipping ubuntu with a custom kernel to support their hardware, it also comes with its own set of bugs which Ubuntu needs to deal with when they are reported upstream. So I could understand if they'd want to charge for that.
However, it seems to be about being able to call their modified system as Ubuntu, which is exactly why trademark laws exist - Canonical is and should be the sole authority in deciding if something that's not made by them, but is somewhat similar and wants to be called Ubuntu can be called Ubuntu; they can allow it, allow it if they get paid, deny it no matter what because they don't like you, or allow it under any totally arbitrary conditions.
It may be legal to call it "an Ubuntu derived system" or "Ubuntu-compatible OS" or something like that, depending on a bunch of stuff; but if you want to make something that's almost-but-not-exactly-Ubuntu and call it Ubuntu, then it's a very risky decision.
The analogy that sprang to my mind is a store saying they're selling Coke; you have to be able to describe what you're saying. You can't be expected to have a flyer saying "this week only, we're selling the popular cola beverage with the red label for $2 per 2l bottle!"
In this case it would be the equivalent of your store opening up all the bottles of Coke and adding or removing ingredients. They can't then sell the result of their tampering as "Coke". They'd have to give it a new name, Freedom Cola, for example.
This is literally "nominative use" and is explicitly allowed by US and EU law. You can name your competitor's product. You can compare your product with that of your competitors'.
You can't adulterate someone's trademark product and still use the mark to refer to the product.
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.
Asked if removing the option to have the ovh modified version of Ubuntu will be enough. I always have random bugs when I was using it anyway. And it's pretty hard to debug.
Matthew Garrett has been chasing this around[1].
Wouldn't that be Debian?
RHEL: £19.99/month (€25.64) from OVH UK page
People don't seem to complain that RHEL asks for money.
I'm pretty sure I've come across your name before and seem to associate you with a security focus. Wouldn't it be better to have the fully maintained Ubuntu rather than OVH's un-maintained custom build?
In my understanding this business model emerged after the Cloud providers needed patches very fast after Heartbleed [0]. In return for the kickback, Canonical offers fast patches and Hosters/Cloud providers can use the Ubuntu logo.
Are we talking "better" for Unix/Linux old-guard purist-reactionaries? Or for people who want a server that just works?
I personally just stick to Ubuntu because, on most of the software I download, there are usually explicit setup instructions for Ubuntu, and then "other Linux". Life is too short. Ubuntu is the path of least resistance and let's be honest, it works.
By the way, while I'm not sure about this trademark thing, I personally want Canonical to be a profitable and stable company that can continue to invest, and that will be around for a long time. We can't leave all the Linux money to Redhat.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/canoni...
In that case, they don't need to pay Canonical anything, and the OVH users would have a better OS to install.
Badly worded, sorry: I was inviting OVH to go to a court and check if Canonical has any right asking them a license.
I confirm that I'll move to another distro if OVH charges me more because of this.
I run Ubuntu on all three of my Linux laptops and usually on leased servers and VPSs, and I support them with donations, but if this tweet from OVH is legitimate, then someone at Conanical needs to do some back peddling on this.
I like it because it offers the trade-off of recency and stability that suits me - relative stability with 6 month update cycle. Debian is either more stable on a ~2-3 year cycle (currently jessie), or less stable on an ongoing release (sid).
