Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 139 posts

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#21

Post by delonia »

pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

That's repeated all too often and it gets stuck into the mind of people. But is it actually true?

Ubuntu is still heavily based on Debian and still reuses most of the packages. There has been a gradual move towards systemd and systemd is default in Ubuntu 15.10.

To me, mjg59 comes out as a bitter person. He used to work for Canonical in the early days of Ubuntu. He shared the vision for a usable open-source desktop.

Then came the new GNOME 3 and the particular way that GNOME development works. It was not workable to offer to the users a stable and distinct user experience. So, Unity was created and all hell broke loose.

Now, when Mark farts, they scream "Terrorist gas attack!". A couple of days ago there was some open-source appreciation day by the Ubuntu community and it looks very suspicious that mjg95 coincided his rant with this. I think the previous rant was also coinciding with some similar positive Ubuntu announcement.

It looks even more difficult to get an open-source desktop. mjg59's attitude is like "if it is not ours, let's f* their efforts anyway".

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#22

Post by lmm »

Already__Taken wrote: post #18
raverbashing wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had read it yes (and missed that part), but curiously that part refers to Fedora (which was traditionally more liberal), not RHEL

As I understand it Fedora is where RHEL comes from is it not? So Redhat replace in their own branding just like everyone else.

It's not as simple as that. Fedora is used as a kind of public beta for RHEL which is much slower moving and more server-oriented; there's not a direct translation from one to the other.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#23

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #7
raverbashing wrote: post #3

Ok the real question is, how does this compares to CentOS/"Prominent Linux Vendor" relationship And Linux Mint also recompiles and replaces the trademarks no?

Did you read Garrett's post? Prominent Linux Vendor segregates its trademarks into three packages and documents that you need to replace those specific packages (and only those) with versions that don't infringe their trademarks if you wish to redistribute.

[deleted]

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#24

Post by delonia »

"If you are smart enough, you can spin anything towards the direction of your choosing."

We see this all the time in online communities and we see it again with all this "hatred" against the Ubuntu community.

Here is Mark Shuttleworth replying to Garret: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/38467.html?thread=1474883#cmt147...

So Garret contacted Ubuntu for some unspecified project that he claimed he wanted to start. In reality, he was mining for quotes to misinterpret. Sad git.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#26

Post by pjmlp »

pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

My first GNU/Linux experience was with Slackware 2.0 and I already knew Xenix, DG/UX and Aix by then. Since then I have tried all major distributions.

SuSE before it went enterprise, Mandrake before it lost support were the only real alternatives to Ubuntu in terms of consumer desktop experience.

Nowadays I only care it works as it is supposed to be, as I don't have the patience any longer to fiddle with configurations, and even Ubuntu has its own quirks that lead to weekend projects.

EDIT: Extra words due to copy-paste.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#27

Post by swills »

spaceSub wrote: post #16
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are open-source, but they only really work on Ubuntu. Upstart is another example, and it's part of why other Ubuntu-specific things won't work on other distros. Other distros could try to port Ubuntu projects, but why would Canonical accept their patches upstream?

Actually the systemd guys looked at upstart for redhat in the beginning, but choose to rewrite it anyway. That had nothing to do with the Canonical entanglement though. Though I dislike Unity and Mir, I think RedHats understanding of "Open" Source is a lot more disturbing.. https://lwn.net/Articles/432012

RHEL 6 (and CentOS 6 by extension) use Upstart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart#Adoption

Not that I disagree with your comments on Red Hat, but let's get our facts right.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#28

Post by jacquesm »

netheril96 wrote: post #4
pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

Correct me if I am wrong, but to my understanding, both Unity and Mir are open source, and nothing stops other distros from adopting it.

Too many horizontal dependencies on other Ubuntu stuff. Ubuntu should learn how to properly define interfaces and stack stuff vertically rather than to make ties willy-nilly with other Ubuntu specific stuff.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#29

Post by greyman »

delonia wrote: post #21
pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

That's repeated all too often and it gets stuck into the mind of people. But is it actually true? Ubuntu is still heavily based on Debian and still reuses most of the packages. There has been a gradual move towards systemd and systemd is default in Ubuntu 15.10. To me, mjg59 comes out as a bitter person. He used to work for Canonical in the early days of Ubuntu. He shared the vision for a usable open-source desktop.…

I don't see it as a rant. He criticized Ubuntu for unwillingness to clarify the trademark issue. Correct me if I am wrong, but how I understood the article, what Canonical did was to take Debian sources licensed under GPL, created a product based on it, but now if anyone wants to do binary redistribution of their product [the right GPL license assures], they could be sued for trademark infringement. So in practice they made it non-free software [free as in Stallman definition of free].

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#30

Post by delonia »

paulajohnson wrote: post #17

I think that you could make a good-faith effort to get rid of as many as possible, for instance by grepping the code tree for the word "Canonical" (with a capital C) and manually scanning all images. Then if Canonical find something you missed you can promptly remove it. At that point any infringement is de minimis and not something they can build a case on.

Garrett is proposing another wild goose chase, just because he dislikes Ubuntu so much.

Even the GPL licence has a "no warranty clause". The software is "as is", it is your problem to keep the pieces when it breaks. You can imagine a person spinning this into "you cannot trust open-source because they do not offer just a bit of warranty".

Post reply on HN