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 its whole form. You just can't rip out/add pieces to it and still call it Ubuntu, because then it infringes trademark. If you want to change it, you can, but then it can't be "Ubuntu".
> He criticized Ubuntu for unwillingness to clarify the trademark issue.
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).
With Ubuntu and any other software, you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings. What packages are included in Ubuntu, changes all the time and the code changes as well. How can a policy document be explicit when there is no infrastructure yet in place to deal with those code changes? CentOS was in this same position and they did the work without bitching to Redhat.
> With Ubuntu and any other software, you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings.
(Emphasis mine)
That's not true of any other software!
I'm not sure how things are for RHEL, but I imagine they're basically similar to Fedora. Fedora doesn't fuzzily require you to "remove and replace all trademarks". It explicitly requires you to remove the branding -- i.e. repository information, change logs and logos. They even provide a nice list of what you have to remove. Everything that you must replace is in three packages.
Now, I'd normally just suspect mjg59 of bitterness, were it not for Canonical's PR dance around the issue.
The accusation is clear: mjg59 thinks that Canonical is intentionally keeping the wording vague so that they can have a word to say in who is developing products based on Ubuntu. Anyone who wants to use something based on Ubuntu has to ask for approval. Otherwise you might end up in court because you didn't remove "Removed spurious call to foo_frobnicate() to fix crashes on Xubuntu" from an upstream changelog.
Canonical has been handing out these approvals for free so far, but I don't think any requests came from current or future competitors. There's no reason to believe that Canonical would be as eager to approve a direct Ubuntu Phone competitor.
Yes yes, it's in their interest to not be as eager, but if this was such a big problem, they should have thought twice before basing their business around a bunch of GPLd products.
It's hard to suspect Canonical of good intentions when every single answer they handed out managed to answer another question. The dialog so far has basically been:
Q: Oh hi guys, look... I'd like to make an Ubuntu derivative, can you tell me what I have to remove?
A: All trademarks.
Q: What do you mean by all trademarks?
A: Or you can ask us for approval instead.
Q: I get it, but I'd rather just remove all trademarks... what exactly do you mean by that? Do I have to remove e.g. mentions of Ubuntu from an upstream changelog, or the @ubuntu.com e-mail address of a contributor listed in an about dialog or a CONTRIBUTORS file?
A: Look, we get this is important, but we have to make sure Evil Hackers don't impersonate Ubuntu so we have to ask you to either remove all trademarks, or ask us for approval.
Q: But I'm not an evil hacker!
A: Then we'll approve your request.
Q: BUT I DON'T WANT TO ASK YOU, I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT TO REMOVE!
A: Look, we get this is important, but we have to make sure Evil Hackers don't impersonate Ubuntu so we have to ask you to either remove all trademarks, or ask us for approval.
It kind of gets in an infinite loop at this point.
Canonical could clarify the wording without opening themselves up to Evil Hackers. Their unwillingness to do so is (somewhat insultingly) veiled in arguments that are about as childish as they're trying to imply mjg59's are. It's hard to suspect them of good intentions under these conditions.