[rtkwe]

In a letter of the law sort of way Ubuntu could still be following that. You're completely free to redistribute an unmodified or modified version so long as your modifications include stripping the Ubuntu marks. Of course that's very much against the spirit of the freedoms.

It's a tricky position trying to build a company around OSS free software. On the one hand you have the principals of free software on the other you have the fact that people distributing crapified version of your software with your name still on it means you're getting a lot of support and complaints that cost money to deal with even if it's just to determine that it's Crap-Ubuntu and not the version you've made.

[lorenzhs]

Well that's the point that Matthew has been making all these years. The problem is that Canonical say "you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries", no matter whether the use of the trademark is infringing (neither Matthew nor I have an argument with that, they need to protect their trademarks) or not (this is where they use copyright law to require removal of the trademark, even if trademark law wouldn't require it).

Nobody's arguing that you should be allowed to take an Ubuntu image, mess it up, and distribute the result under the name Ubuntu. That would clearly infringe on Canonical's trademarks.

[trademarklaw777]

Trademark law can vary. As I understand it can be easy to lose a trademark if you let it become generic.

So it may not violate trademark law but it could dilute a trademark.

Also the section on packaging for distribution in the GNU Philosophy says requests to remove logos and names, i.e. trademarks, before a downstream party can distribute the rest is acceptable.

As I understand it, many of the most useful packages are from upstream anyway. It's mostly Canonical metapackages that define Upstream packages to install that are in question and they contain canonical logos and names

It states a couple times at least that upholding the core tenets are key. Ubuntu isn't creating scenario such that distribution is now impossible, or claiming control over the upstream which are arguably the most valuable.

Could be a good project. A Canonical free "Ubuntu" that replaces their metapackages yet results in a nearly identical OS. Problem solved.

Really one could probably just write some Ansible to do this to Debian these days.

Regardless, a solution is readily in reach for sufficiently skilled users. Given that, I have a hard time taking this as nothing more than kicking up dust for the sake of being right