A must read very important news

[GreyGeek]

... But you can try to hinder competition to your existing business (support, server, cloud, etc.) with murky licensing terms of your binaries, which I think is Canonical's end game here (unless SFLC puts an end to it).

I agree. As I read it, .i.e, IMO, the goal of SABDFL is to choke off the Ubuntu orphans and their KDE & Gnome desktops. Charging the orphans for the Ubuntu base binaries & brands would be an effective way to do that. It certainly is NOT about creating an income source out of Kubuntu and the other orphans.

The underlying fact is this: Unity and Gnome are crap. I'm not just expressing a personal preference here. The huge up take of Mate and Cinnamon are testament to that fact. Contry to what some people have said Mark Shuttleworth is totally correct in see Kubuntu as a threat. KDE was the dominant Linux Desktop before Ubuntu bigged up Gnome. KDE is the best desktop GUI to promote the growth of Desktop Linux. Its just not the best desktop to support Canonicals Phone / Tablet ambitions. Which is where they think the money is.

Exactly. Before Shuttlesworth put Gnome on Ubuntu the KDE desktop was the most widely used Linux GUI. Qt was released as a proprietary tool with an agreement with the KDE Foundation that required Toltech to never let the GPL version of the API lag more than 12 months behind the commercial release. If they did, or went bankrupt, the proprietary source code for the API became free GPL code. If Toltech sold the Qt API the KF agreement required that the buyer had to agree to the KF agreement, which prevented Novell from killing it.

Gnome, built on C, uses callbacks, whereas Qt uses a very powerful and easy to use Signals & Slots. Using QBLOCK as the first command in custom classes adds memory management, garbage collection and pointer cleanup automatically, among other things.

Michael de Icaza didn't like the Qt API because of its proprietary roots, claiming that it wasn't truly GPL, and wrote Gnome using GPL tools and releasing it under the GPL. Shuttlesworth adopted Gnome and the gtk+ API. Later, because of their tablet and phone plans, they dropped Gnome and created Unity, which they control completely. Although Unity is under a GPL license, AFAIK, the only platform it is usable on is Ubuntu.

[Rich Oliver]

The underlying fact is this: Unity and Gnome are crap. I'm not just expressing a personal preference here. The huge up take of Mate and Cinnamon are testament to that fact. Contry to what some people have said Mark Shuttleworth is totally correct to see Kubuntu as a threat. KDE was the dominant Linux Desktop before Ubuntu bigged up Gnome. KDE is the best desktop GUI to promote the growth of Desktop Linux. Its just not the best desktop to support Canonical's Phone / Tablet ambitions. Which is where they think the money is.

[kubicle]

I really don't think there is any real legitimate business in selling binaries (and/or charging distributors for licenses to use the binary repos), there are too many free options available and ubuntu doesn't really bring anything new to the table. It's been attempted before, without success.

But you can try to hinder competition to your existing business (support, server, cloud, etc.) with murky licensing terms of your binaries, which I think is Canonical's end game here (unless SFLC puts an end to it).

[xennex81]

My feeling is GreyGeek is writing something very solid here. My impression was that the discontent with Riddell stems from his disagreement. It seems political goals are being furthered. We may only know the tip of the iceberg. But it came to me across, earlier even, that the fight with Riddell is all about dismembering Kubuntu? It seems to match up. I feel so powerless but that is more my personal life. I have been disempowered, or allowed that to happen.

[SteveRiley]

My best guess with this binary licensing issue is that it is aimed at the cloud software market where ubuntu has had a lot of success and actually makes some money. Probably Canonical want to make sure no commercial company copies and exploits ubuntu for cloud servers and hence robs them of some income.

Their income is from services and tools -- Landscape, BootStack, Ubuntu Advantage (info). Not, notably, from the binaries of the operating system. If they started charging for that, I'd wager that a lot of Ubuntu instance starts on Amazon Web Services would rapidly move to a different distro.

Interesting reading...
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online...cial-statement

[MoonRise]

The information I've been seeing is about charging for the use of their code. Trademark (which I do understand that to a degree) and other fees and such. If that information I've read is wrong then so be it but the amount of information seems to indicate that for the most part it's correct.

Now, it seems to me I remember a tiff with the Debian group not so dissimilar. Canonical wasn't communicating upstream there. So seems to be they want it their way only. No respect for Canonical.

[bendy]

Should it it be based on stable or Sid? I'd vote stable because a distro the is both polished and stable is, for me preferable to bloodshed. One of my pet peeves is development advancing to the next release without adequately addressing the nagging or annoying bugs in the current release. My experience with Kubuntu is that its LTS is STABLE.

In an ideal world we would have both - a stable LTS based on Jessie, and a bleeding-edge rolling release based on Sid.

Of course that would take significantly more resources.....

[bendy]

Someone said that Shuttleworth wants to charge derivatives for the use of Ubuntu binaries. Is this true?

I don't know the details of the IP licensing dispute, but I understand that Canonical's lawyers either are, or have been, in discussion with the Software Freedom Law Center. The SFLC go after GPL-violators, so they Canonical won't get an easy ride there.

However, it's too easy to mix up licensing and trademark issues. Canonical own the *buntu trademarks, including kubuntu. That means they can attach pretty much any conditions they like to the use of the trademark, incluing a requirement to kiss Shuttleworth's feet and/or sacrifice your first born if they so desire. Free software projects in turn are free to decline those terms and not use the *buntu trademarks anywhere whilst still using the source code.

It's down to trademark issues, not software licensing, that you get iceweasel in debian rather than firefox.

What I don't get though is who can actually afford to pay for a binary license, even if Canonical agree something legal with the SFLC? Most free software projects are run on a shoestring and simply don't have the spare cash to pay. I bet that even Mint or Blue Systems could not afford to pay enough for a license to cover what Canonical must be paying in legal fees to sort the mess out.

My best guess with this binary licensing issue is that it is aimed at the cloud software market where ubuntu has had a lot of success and actually makes some money. Probably Canonical want to make sure no commercial company copies and exploits ubuntu for cloud servers and hence robs them of some income. *buntu flavours like kubuntu are probably just caught in the cross-fire with this issue.

[SteveRiley]

what Shuttleworth wants to do, charge for the use

I'm not sure I follow this. Mind explaining your reasons a bit more?

[MoonRise]

OK, the last link was great!

[Danum]

SOAPBOX:

Just reading more into it and the further releases by CC it is clearly a lawyer driven enterprise and because Jonathan was vocal about "IP" practices and that stepped on what Shuttleworth wants to do, charge for the use. It's all lawyer derived political $h!t. What I'm hoping is that Blue Systems can get the backing they need to take Kubuntu to the next level without the "buntu". Clearly the term Ubuntu has been twisted by lawyer drivel as always they do for anything. CC is a disgrace to the term.

There is a lot more to this, like
Details on Incoming Funds - October 2012 to April of 2013. or what happened to them?.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ay/000548.html

donation to flavours in 2012
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ay/000484.html

and a link for Canonical,
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/acco...=9780470246009

[MoonRise]

SOAPBOX:

Just reading more into it and the further releases by CC it is clearly a lawyer driven enterprise and because Jonathan was vocal about "IP" practices and that stepped on what Shuttleworth wants to do, charge for the use. It's all lawyer derived political $h!t. What I'm hoping is that Blue Systems can get the backing they need to take Kubuntu to the next level without the "buntu". Clearly the term Ubuntu has been twisted by lawyer drivel as always they do for anything. CC is a disgrace to the term.

[claydoh]

This is not entirely accurate. Jonathan, Rohan and I (Harald) are currently working full time on Blue Systems projects (including Kubuntu). Aurélien is on a free software break and instead writing cool games for android http://greenyetilab.com/. Scott pretty much pulled out of development after the recent Kubuntu Council meeting https://skitterman.wordpress.com/201...-i-may-be-done. Actual volunteer developer at the time of writing is only Scarlett with Ovidiu having done some packaging but presently mostly doing web and marketing things as well as development in KDE.

Thanks for the clarification, apachelogger!

[apachelogger]

Yup, Jonathan is full-time Kubuntu, Shadeslayer (Rohan Garg) is both KDE and Kubuntu, and Aurélien Gâteauas well, but I don't see him around often these days.

Volunteer devs are Scott Kitterman, Harald Sitter, Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan, and a few that pop in and out sometimes
There are a small group of packagers, such as the ever-busy Scarlett Clark, and docs people like Aaron Honeycutt as well as community folks like Valorie Zimmerman. I used to fit into the Community area a little, but haven't yet found enough time to take on responsibilities again.

This is not entirely accurate. Jonathan, Rohan and I (Harald) are currently working full time on Blue Systems projects (including Kubuntu). Aurélien is on a free software break and instead writing cool games for android http://greenyetilab.com/. Scott pretty much pulled out of development after the recent Kubuntu Council meeting https://skitterman.wordpress.com/201...-i-may-be-done. Actual volunteer developer at the time of writing is only Scarlett with Ovidiu having done some packaging but presently mostly doing web and marketing things as well as development in KDE.

[GreyGeek]

Someone said that Shuttleworth wants to charge derivatives for the use of Ubuntu binaries. Is this true? Is this not something 'alledgedly'? It can hardly be said that that BlueSystems or whatever would be the one to pay it, that makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense is end-users, but that requires are real sales program.

As I understand what I've read, that is one of two major complaints that Riddell had with the Canonical Council. Shuttlesworth's lawyers are working on a loop hole to justify the charge for binaries. Strangely, there is no restriction in the GPL for someone charging for the source code, if the recipient is willing to pay for it. However, if one hands out a binary and the recipient wants the exact source that was used to compile the binary the GPL requires that the source code be given.

However, compiling a distro source code requires more than just the code. One must also know the tree structure and have access to the compile scripts and tools. There is no obligation in the GPL for the vendor to supply that information. RedHat, for example, is required to supply its source code to everyone who buys their server software. When I downloaded their source each of the 700+ files were individually tarred, then zipped. One had to download each file, one at a time. The server WAS limited to the number one could download at once. When all the downloads were complete and the source files untarred and unzipped one learns that there are NO instructions on how the source file structure should be arranged, there are NO bash scripts that were used to set up environmental variables and compile the kernel and individual files. Anyone who can do that is in a league very few coders reached.

(That said, I wouldn't mind BUYING Kubuntu for say 20 dollars if it's a real solid release like 14.10, not something flaky like 15.04.)

I paid $25 for a book, "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush, IIRC, and RH 5.0 CD was in the back of that paperback. In Sept of 1998 I switched to SuSE 5.3 and over the next five years paid $20-$25 each for 23 copies of SuSE to support their development. Wind River handled the sales and the asking price rose over the years. I paid for copies of Mandrake, and then Mandriva. I also paid for copies of PCLinuxOS. It's been money well spent. I've never been asked to pay for Kubuntu but I've donated to it.

I would have NO objection to paying for a GPL copy of Kubuntu (or Kdebian). However, on the average fewer than 3% of users pay for a distro or donate to its development, and that figure may be high.