Canonical IP

[slackguy]

2015

Welcome to Canonical’s IPRights Policy. This policy is published by Canonical Limited (Canonical, we, us and our) under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA version 3.0 UK licence.

Canonical owns and manages certain intellectual property rights in Ubuntu and other associated intellectual property (Canonical IP) and licenses the use of these rights to enterprises, individuals and members of the Ubuntu community in accordance with this IPRights Policy.

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You can modify Ubuntu for personal or internal commercial use.

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damn did i break the ULA already canonical ? i'm sorry canonical i wont use your UK privelages system then. i might abuse it.

(microsoft ULA: you own only what you print that is free from anything digital; anything in digital form is properly of microsoft! read it closely that's what it says, they have a right to take your media and call it their own as well. right to steal they say, and tell companies that also is the condition of driver inclusion in their "product")

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QUESTION: Is it me or did canonical drop a legal bomb on cow ownership, while telling everyone else to eat sand as contributors and please donate often ?

[T.J.]

QUESTION: Is it me or did canonical drop a legal bomb on cow ownership, while telling everyone else to eat sand as contributors and please donate often ?

Canonical is interested in harnessing contributors' works for its own mobile ambitions, so its representatives say a lot of things in order to make certain it can exploit the work of others for its own commercial benefit. I don't really have a problem with that. Every company does it, including Google. What matters to me is that these companies return the courtesy, and so far Canonical has. As long as the original contributor put it under a FOSS license, Canonical's lawyers can make any claims they want, but can't enforce them, usually. They can "get stuffed" 90% of the time, as far as I am concerned.

What I do have a slight problem with are Canonical's contributor agreements, which you have to sign in order to work with the company. The agreements allow it to relicense your code for proprietary use, even if you chose release it under a copyleft license like the GPL. I consider the agreements a little underhanded, as they undercut the spirit by which many contribute. I don't understand why Canonical doesn't simply say they only accept non-GPL contributions and be done with it.

https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/ff2478d1-C ... I_v1.2.pdf

It's not a huge deal. I dual license code as MIT/GPL2. I prefer that everyone be extremely direct and honest about it. It feels like Canonical, which makes such a show of public support for Linux, FOSS, and the GPL, is run by people who are a little bit hypocritical. It could be a bit more transparent about its internal practices. Then again, so could Google or Apple.

I would be very cautious about Ubuntu's own code, and review the license before you use it. As it can relicense others' code and add terms, I would seriously avoid using anything Canonical provides and get it from upstream instead, simply to make certain you aren't liable. That is not to say anything bad of Canonical. It is just a legitimate concern.

Just be wary of Canonical, IMHO.

[HuangLao]

They are becoming a proprietary system posing as open-source. Some may argue they always were. New "snappy core" and "snap packages" are another example. Might be good for Debian if Ubuntu stops sucking off its tit and leaves home.

[T.J.]

They are becoming a proprietary system posing as open-source.

Perhaps. The same can be said of Google Android, Apple Darwin or even Microsoft (if you consider Project Roslyn). I don't have a problem with it. I just prefer less propaganda about their support of FOSS. Then again, motives are rarely unselfish.

New "snappy core" and "snap packages" are another example.

That doesn't make sense to me. As far as I know, the code for snap is BSD licensed, so that is not proprietary. Am I mistaken?

Might be good for Debian if Ubuntu stops sucking off its tit and leaves home.

That won't happen. Even Mark Shuttleworth admits that Ubuntu can't survive without Debian's help.

Have a fabulous day!

[HuangLao]

Perhaps. The same can be said of Google Android, Apple Darwin or even Microsoft (if you consider Project Roslyn). I don't have a problem with it. I just prefer less propaganda about their support of FOSS. Then again, motives are rarely unselfish.

That doesn't make sense to me. As far as I know, the code for snap is BSD licensed, so that is not proprietary. Am I mistaken?


That won't happen. Even Mark Shuttleworth admits that Ubuntu can't survive without Debian's help.

Have a fabulous day!

Snap and Snappy would be proprietary to Ubuntu and would only work on Ubuntu. Also, it will be very easy to "hide" code and programs in snap packages as they are bundled together as one super package. Dependencies make it much harder to "hide" programs. This also takes Ubuntu one step further away from open-source and one step closer to Microsoft and Apple. Which is their end goal IMO, at which time they will probably sell off/cash out, perhaps to Microsoft.

Re: Shuttleworth, he has also stated that they cannot survive without Debian for now. Snap packages is a move away from that, and the goal is for Ubuntu to no longer use .deb at all.

[T.J.]

Snap and Snappy would be proprietary to Ubuntu and would only work on Ubuntu.

I don't see how that can be, since snap is BSD licensed, and the intent is a package that contains its own dependencies. It's no more revolutionary or disturbing than a tar file of a program with the libraries included - a very common practice when installing third party software on most Unixes to avoid ABI issues.

Also, it will be very easy to "hide" code and programs in snap packages as they are bundled together as one super package. Dependencies make it much harder to "hide" programs.

As someone who actually writes code for a living, I have to disagree. That statement doesn't make much sense. Increasing the number of dependencies actually makes it easier because I could link to a library without knowing its content.

If I wanted to hide something in the code, I have serious doubts that 80% of the people who use Linux would even notice, because they never examine the codebase. The entire point of open source is that code can't be hidden. Open source is an incentive to not pull shenanigans.. If you don't trust the binary form, compile it yourself after inspecting the code, and certainly don't use firmware blobs.

This also takes Ubuntu one step further away from open-source and one step closer to Microsoft and Apple. Which is their end goal IMO, at which time they will probably sell off/cash out, perhaps to Microsoft.

I don't see how. Snap is FOSS according to everything I have seen. If Canonical decided to divest itself of Ubuntu, I feel they would be doing everyone a favor. They are poor stewards at best, IMHO.

Snap packages is a move away from that, and the goal is for Ubuntu to no longer use .deb at all.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3056668/ ... ation.html

Sorry, but I believe you are mistaken.

Even if that were true that Ubuntu wanted to drop the .deb format, so what? It's a decent package system, and it works well enough for Debian, but it is hardly irreplaceable. With respect to the hard work of the dpkg/apt maintainers, I have seen better. Debian packages have no deltas, no transaction tests, no rollbacks, hardwired scripts, no easy methods for resolving multiple package versions from different sources, and almost all operations are synchronous only.

No, Debian packaging is far from perfect, and hasn't changed significantly in over a decade. It has decent engineering, but it is hardly exceptional by today's standards. Every other major Linux can do what the Debian package manager does, and sometimes better than Debian. If Debian adopted some of the ideas behind Snap, I'd actually be pleased. Many of the above problems would be rendered moot.

What Debian does have is an incredible and hardworking community that takes care of its own, and tries to adhere to a set of ethics. That is its real strength and the reason it has endured for two decades.

[HuangLao]

Many people, myself included, see the so called advancements of more modern package managers as regressions. Debians strength has always been its packages, community and the social contract, as stated by Ian (have to locate the interview).

Look at Slackware (which I also use), it has the most basic package manager and can do alot more then the so called advanced package managers.

Snap/Snappy will also create, or has a greater possibility of creating, security holes as well. But that is another discussion.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/306 ... -flaw.html

[swirler]

Snap and Snappy would be proprietary to Ubuntu and would only work on Ubuntu. Also, it will be very easy to "hide" code and programs in snap packages as they are bundled together as one super package. Dependencies make it much harder to "hide" programs.

Right. Those are probably nothing else than glorified mobile "apps" (with all the baggage on regard to security issues that apps carry with them) smuggled into the desktop computer under the "snap" packages definition, with the ultimate goal to unchain such software pieces from the apt mechanism and Ubuntu in general from the .deb packages structure.

[T.J.]

Many people, myself included, see the so called advancements of more modern package managers as regressions.

Well, that's fair enough. I'm not trying to convert you to another point of view. We can agree to disagree.

I've worked with Debian since the 90s (and Slakware a few years before Debian), but I have never been officially part of the project. I've seen its good and bad, and I can admit the existing system has some shortcomings - but it is better than what came before it. I personally believe that something like snap - not necessarily snap itself - is the way forward to address some of the existing shortcomings.

Whether I am right or not, is something that only time will answer.

Take care! =)