[tsimionescu]

It should be noted, as many businesses are finding out, that you can't redistribute Ubuntu binaries or sources as-is, since they contain registered trademarks of Canonical.

So, if you want to ship Ubuntu-based systems, you actually have to maintain your own version of all of their software stripped of the trademarks and re-compiled, or pay them. It seems Canonical is getting more interested in actually enforcing this, I believe they mostly ignored it for a long time now.

Debian seems like a much simpler alternative than doing all this.

Source: https://ubuntu.com/legal/intellectual-property-policy

> 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 [emphasis mine]. 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).

[_ea1k]

That is basically the same as what Red Hat used to do. Centos had to be very careful to avoid improper trademark usage in their rebuild.

[maffydub]

Do you have any other references on this?

It seems that it all hinges on what a "modified version" of Ubuntu is. Is redistributing their packages outside of a full disk image a modified version?

[tsimionescu]

Don't have more sources , but my understanding is that Canonical considers that anything other than downloading an Ubuntu disk image from Canonical and hosting that on your own site constitutes a modification.

So, for example, if you take an Ubuntu image, change the default username and password, and re-export it as a new ISO, you have modified the Ubuntu image and can't redistribute it with the *buntu trademarks unless you make an agreement with Canonical. IANAL so don't take my word for it, but this is my honest understanding of what Canonical claims at least.

This does seem to be in agreement with the next item in the FAQ I linked - where they say that using an image that doesn't conform to the IPRights policy from someone else is not recommended since they can't guarantee that it will work with future updates or such - which any modification even of default settings could provoke.

[maffydub]

Thanks! I agree with your reading that changing the default username and password and re-exporting would count as modification.

However, it seems there are plenty of Ubuntu .deb mirrors out there... and there are even instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Debmirror.

Your previous post said "you can't redistribute Ubuntu binaries or sources as-is, since they contain registered trademarks of Canonical" (emphasis mine), which I think isn't quite true - there has to be some modification involved to fall foul of Ubuntu's IPR.

[tsimionescu]

Oops, you're right, I misspoke - I was thinking about the modification step as a given, but that's not what I said. Apologies for the confusion.

[traceroute66]

> Do you have any other references on this?

Not a reference per-se, but an interesting post on the Nirokey blog "NextBox: Why we Decided for and Against Ubuntu Core"

[1]https://www.nitrokey.com/news/2021/nextbox-why-we-decided-an...

[mistrial9]

learning from their new Masters in Redmond perhaps?