[CoLoCo] Ubuntu at Best Buy

[Neal McBurnett]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 06:51:09PM -0600, Jim Hutchinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us> wrote: 
>     Of course they can.  You're confusing "free as in beer" with "free as
>     in freedom".  Best Buy can't take away the freedom for anyone to
>     distribute copies of whatever open source software Bust Buy put on the
>     CD, or the freedom to modify and resell, etc.  But they, and anyone
>     else, can sell it for whatever price they want.  If Canonical tried to
>     limit Best Buy's right to do that, Canonical would be the one that got
>     in legal trouble :)
> 
>     And I think that's a good thing - just don't buy it if you don't think
>     it is a good deal.
> 
> 
> Ianal, but I think there is a problem with this. First, the Ubuntu promise is
> "Ubuntu will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and
> security updates." That is free as in beer. Someone charging $100 for just the
> disc (i.e. no book or support) is breaking the promise. I understand how FOSS
> works but isn't Ubuntu still copyrighted? Maybe Ubuntu is different from say
> Red Hat, I'm not sure. However, if I were to take Red Hat and start to sell it,
> wouldn't they take issue? I know I can download all the packages and make my
> own Red Hat because most or all of the software is open. But can I sell Red Hat
> proper? Can microsoft well it without an agreement? I would think at the very
> least if someone was to charge a lot more than the cost of the packing or added
> support, that they should at lest be required to say something like "the
> enclosed software is free (as in beer) and can be downloaded from the Ubuntu
> web site." Otherwise, it's deceptive. It may not be illegal, but taking
> advantage of the ignorance of the consumer certainly seems to violate the
> spirit of Ubuntu. I guess we'll have to wait and see if anyone ever tries to
> charge $100 for just the disc. Of course you could always say it includes $100
> worth of support even if it doesn't or it's such horrible support that it isn't
> worth $100 - and even then, since that would reflect poorly on Ubuntu/Canonical
> I would hope they would try to prevent anything that scars the product or their
> name.

Great questions!  You are correct that other people can't sell Red
Hat.  That is because Red Hat forbids it, and reserves to themselves
the right to sell Red Hat, which costs a pretty penny!  I think they
base the protection on the Red Hat trademark - you can't use their
name, or their logo, on your own products.  But CentOS takes all the
Red Hat packages and security updates as open source and puts out a
nearly identical distribution.

Ubuntu on the other hand promises that Ubuntu will be available free
as in beer: "Ubuntu will always be free of charge, including
enterprise releases and security updates."  But note that that is an
Ubuntu promise, not an Ubuntu restriction.  And Canonical also sells
it themselves online, and doesn't to my knowledge put any restrictions
on who else can sell it or for how much.  And note that the licenses
generally do indeed require that the user be told what their rights
are.  I don't think the risk of folks being taken advantage of is
worth the extra licensing language and confusion that would be needed
to set a "reasonable" upper bound price, especially given the
open-ended issues of "support".

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/