Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If you generate a container image that is not a 100% unmodified version of Ubuntu (ie, you have not removed or added anything), Canonical insist that you must ask them for permission to distribute it. The only alternative is to rebuild every binary package you wish to ship... other than ones whose license explicitly grants permission to redistribute binaries and which do not permit any additional restrictions to be imposed upon the license grants - so any GPLed material is fine.

So, as usual, GPL software, with its strong user protections, is more practical for "business" use.



That's a bit of leap. For this particular issue, which seems to be of questionable tenacity (is there any example of legal precedent for a company successfully enforcing such a clause in this kind of situation), GPL would "solve" the problem, in the same way that MIT or BSD or whatever would solve it: by having a different license that didn't include the cited condition.

GPL also introduces the other fun elements, chief among them being the "viral" nature, and I'm sure we opinionated HN folks could debate for weeks on whether the GPL as a whole is "more practical for business use".


I'm not sure whether you understood what I was trying to say. For any particular package that had originally had an MIT or BSD license, Canonical's requirement to remove trademarks and rebuild would apply. However, since GPL forbids that sort of requirement for derived works, and it was Canonical that happily sprinkled their trademarks everywhere in the first place, Canonical cannot make that requirement with respect to GPL packages.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: