Why Do You Need License From Canonical To Create Derivatives?

sfcrazy writes "Canonical's requirement of a license for those creating Ubuntu derivatives is back in the news. Yesterday the Community Council published a statement about Canonical's licensing policies, but it's vague and it provides no resolution to the issue. It tells creators of derivative distros to avoid the press and instead talk to the Community Council (when they're not quick about responding). Now Jonathan Riddell of Kubuntu has come forth to say no one needs any license to create any derivative distro. So, the question remains: If Red Hat doesn't force a license on Oracle or CentOS, why does Canonical insist upon one?"

Because Canonical..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. thinks FLOSS developers provide free labour to the advancement of its IP.

Re:License needed only for specific things

[Ynot_82]

It sounds like Canonical are just a bunch of a**holes.

How is this any different to what Mozilla or Redhat do?

It's brand protection.
They don't want some shody fork that's poorly designed to use their trademarked name and possibly impacting their reputation.

Billuntu - Packed with malware
Jilluntu - It wipes your disk without confirmation

Re:License needed only for specific things

[phantomfive]

Same reason the name "Linux" is not open source. Trademarks are an indication of brand, of saying, "this product is made by us, therefore it is good." Or "this product is made by us, therefore it is cheap." Or luxurious, or whatever. If you know anything about microphones, you can be sure that a Manley mic will be top quality and clear. An AudioTechnica mic will have pretenses of grandeur.

And if it's labeled Ubuntu, you can be confident it will completely disregard the desires of the end-user, and be ignorant of the Unix Way; but at least the wifi drivers will work.

Re:License needed only for specific things

[r1348]

No, it's community stranglehold under the disguise of trademark protection.
Of course, if I started a distro called The Better Redhat I'd have lawyers knocking down my door by dinner time, but if I called it, say, CentOS and declared it derived from RHEL but not officially endorsed by Redhat, I'd be just fine. Now that you cannot do with Ubuntu right now, or anyway the details are shady enough I'd not risk it.