Free software that is impractical to redistribute, isn't (Canonical IP policy)

> Basically, you cannot distribute a modified ubuntu and call it ubuntu. Makes sense from a trademark perspective.

This might be the policy. The fact that the policy is -from a legal standpoint- at odds with what people informally claim that the policy says is the matter at issue. From the article:

'The issue here is the apparently simple phrase "you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code". "Trademarks" is defined later as being the words "Ubuntu", "Kubuntu", "Juju", "Landscape", "Edubuntu" and "Xubuntu" in either textual or logo form. ... The naive interpretation of this is that you have to remove trademarks where they'd be infringing ... [b]ut that's not what the policy actually says. It insists that all trademarks be removed, whether they would embody an infringement or not. If a README says "To build this software under Ubuntu, install the following packages", a literal reading of Canonical's policy would require you to remove or replace the word "Ubuntu" even though failing to do so wouldn't be a trademark infringement. If an @ubuntu.com email address is present in a changelog, you'd have to change it. You wouldn't be able to ship the juju-core package without renaming it and the application within. ...

This seems like a pretty ludicrous interpretation, but it's one that Canonical refuse to explicitly rule out.'

MJG -and others- have repeatedly asked Ubuntu representatives for official, binding clarification regarding Canonical's IP policy. Their requests either are ignored, they are pointed to a non-binding, informal blog post written by a community manager (rather than a Canonical lawyer), or they are met with a promise to follow up that goes inevitably unfulfilled.

Edit: Here is an interesting comment thread that -might be- related to my point: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/38467.html?thread=1474883#cmt147... (assuming that the anon is actually a Canonical employee, rather than a troll who's out to muddy the issue).

Well, no. I think what Matt is talking about here is Canonical slapping Ubuntu's trademark policies all over something that is largely derived from other people's software.

Hence the fine line of having some pretense of complying with free software license terms but still violating their intent in practice.

Have you ever had to resort to these extreme redistribution terms for any other commercial distro?

This is basically the crux of it:

"You gave me the rights to produce a project without giving me the rights any downstream recipient needed to do the same thing. I made it clear that that wasn't going to work, and you made it clear that you weren't going to clarify your policy."