Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the process used to generate new version of CentOS from RHEL.
The amount of work necessary to generate new versions of CentOS is not feasible for individuals.
[deleted]
If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
121–130 of 139 posts
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial…
Here's a good example. Canonical comes up with a replacement for sysvinit called Upstart. Everyone agrees sysvinit is a dumpster fire on wheels careening around at high speed, so a new init system is welcomed as a Good Thing. Some people from Red Hat wanted to contribute improvements to Upstart, but Canonical insisted on a Contributor Licensing Agreement that would allow Canonical to relicense the work however they w…
> Vision Engraving Systems
https://lwn.net/Articles/507651/
> A newcomer to the top 20 companies is Vision Engraving Systems, thanks to the Comedi development work from H. Hartley Sweeten. With his work, hopefully this subsystem can move out of the staging area of the kernel in a future release.
> The Comedi project develops open-source drivers, tools, and libraries for data acquisition.
> Comedi is a collection of drivers for a variety of common data acquisition plug-in boards. The drivers are implemented as a core Linux kernel module providing common functionality and individual low-level driver modules.
> Comedilib is a user-space library that provides a developer-friendly interface to Comedi devices. Included in the Comedilib distribution is documentation, configuration and calibration utilities, and demonstration programs.
> Kcomedilib is a Linux kernel module (distributed with Comedi) that provides the same interface as Comedilib in kernel space, suitable for real-time tasks. It is effectively a "kernel library" for using Comedi from real-time tasks.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". That's not what Canonical's policy says. What you described sounds like a perfectly sensible policy. However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Canonical's policy also does not limit itself to functio…
> However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Which is perfectly acceptable. Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing...
> Which is perfectly acceptable.
It's perfectly legal, which is a different thing. The entire premise of this article is that it isn't "perfectly acceptable", and causes serious practical problems.
> Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing...
CentOS goes further than trademark law requires, and the nature of their project means they need to rebuild everything anyway.
While I don't know anything about SUSE's trademark policy, Red Hat has a far less restrictive one.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can distribute unmodified versions of Ubuntu or the binaries, you just can't call Ubuntu + your binaries "Ubuntu", or call your distribution + Ubuntu binaries "Ubuntu". That's not what Canonical's policy says. What you described sounds like a perfectly sensible policy. However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Canonical's policy also does not limit itself to functio…
> However, Canonical's policy instead says you must remove all of Canonical's trademarks. Which is perfectly acceptable. Red Hat and SUSE apply similar restrictions, hence why CentOS is a thing...
No, Red Hat and SuSE do not apply such onerous restrictions. Canonical says that you must rebuild the binaries, even if those binaries don't contain any Canonical trademarks.
Red Hat merely requires that you remove the trademarks in the actual branding packages; they even explicitly state which packages those are, to make it very clear. From their trademark guidelines (https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf):
You must modify the files identified as REDHAT-LOGOS
and ANACONDA-IMAGES so as to remove all use of
images containing the “Red Hat” trademark or Red
Hat’s Shadowman logo. Note that mere deletion of
these files may corrupt the software.
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. For further information, please contact us
(as set out below).
The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have put out statements on this matter, criticizing Canonical for this vague policy:
https://www.fsf.org/news/canonical-updated-licensing-terms https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/jul/15/ubuntu-ip-policy/
Whether this requirement is actually enforceable is another question. Given that Canonical ships copyright notices saying that the software may be distributed in source or binary form, and the only use of the trademarks is in some ancillary metadata on the packages rather than included in the packages themselves, it's unclear if this would actually be considered infringing on their trademark. But the FUD caused by their refusal to clarify this point means that it's a risk for anyone to try doing so; it's possible that a court could decide that it is likely to cause confusion, even in just the form of ancillary metadata in binary packages.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
> So in practice they made it non-free software [free as in Stallman definition of free]. Not at all. RMS isn't philosophically pro-trademark, but he has said that trademark and free software are separate issues (meaning that 'free software' doesn't confer on the user the ability to rip off a trademark). > but now if anyone wants to do binary redistribution of their product You CAN redistribute Ubuntu, but only in it…
> Which is stupid, because trademark is a legal term, defined by the laws of the land. Canonical can't change the way a country interprets 'trademark'.
No, he just wanted them to clarify, what specifically are the things which should be removed from Ubuntu distribution, so it can be then declared as completely stripped from Ubuntu trademark. (other Linux distributions mentioning in the article do provide such information).
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Link to Red Hat's policy (see section on publishing modified software on page 5): https://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf I'm not an expert, but to be honest this sounds pretty similar to what Garrett is complaining about: "You may not name or brand your product “Red Hat” or use the Red Hat trademarks in any way, either on your product or in related advertising." "You must use a different trademark…
Later on the same page they tell you what you have to do to meet those conditions. The fact that Canonical won't do that is what I'm unhappy about.
Are you referring to point D, "modify the files identified as REDHAT-LOGOS and ANACONDA-IMAGES"? Because that doesn't seem sufficient to fully comply with all of the previous points.
I do agree that Canonical haven't been clear enough on this issue but, in my humble opinion, their policies don't seem all that different from Red Hat's.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#127I see a value in this approach. I don't known your experience, but as soon you have a well known OpenSource project with binary distribution, you are going to see it available in a lot of scam download sites. In fact, the OpenSource licenses allow it, and the author is going to have a hard time taking them down. In this regard, OpenSource licenses are too permissive, and are doing a disservice in being too easily abu…
All you need to handle that is a trademark. You don't need to impose restrictions on binaries other than those that trademark law already imposes.
Yeah, and if you try to add restrictions to the software license itself you'll also end up with GPL incompatible code
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
All you need to handle that is a trademark. You don't need to impose restrictions on binaries other than those that trademark law already imposes.
Yeah, and if you try to add restrictions to the software license itself you'll also end up with GPL incompatible code
Large parts of Ubuntu aren't under the GPL, and as a result Canonical can impose additional restrictions.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Later on the same page they tell you what you have to do to meet those conditions. The fact that Canonical won't do that is what I'm unhappy about.
Are you referring to point D, "modify the files identified as REDHAT-LOGOS and ANACONDA-IMAGES"? Because that doesn't seem sufficient to fully comply with all of the previous points. I do agree that Canonical haven't been clear enough on this issue but, in my humble opinion, their policies don't seem all that different from Red Hat's.
It complies with the changes you have to make in the software. You still have to deal with the use of trademark around it, such as the names you associate with the software when you sell it. If you make those changes and then don't claim that what you're selling is RHEL or stick any Red Hat logos on your website, Red Hat won't sue you. It's unclear whether or not that's sufficient for Canonical to be happy.
Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial…
Here's a good example. Canonical comes up with a replacement for sysvinit called Upstart. Everyone agrees sysvinit is a dumpster fire on wheels careening around at high speed, so a new init system is welcomed as a Good Thing. Some people from Red Hat wanted to contribute improvements to Upstart, but Canonical insisted on a Contributor Licensing Agreement that would allow Canonical to relicense the work however they w…
> [1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-
> foundation... (Also, why do I have to tell the Linux
> Foundation who I work for in order to read this report?)