Introduction:

We (CreaLabs) are Ubuntu affiliate because of:

1. some Ubuntu promotion/spreading activities
2. 2 ubuntu derivative distros: ubuntu italian iso, ufficio zero
3. Ubuntu Customization Kit

We constantly and actively support open source and free software with many projects (check crealabs.it for the list).

All of these projects were created and are maintained for free.

The new condition

Ubuntu affiliate program changed, actually some points of the new programs are not clear to me but I read

The other tracks have distinct revenue requirements for progression through them. These numbers are not being made public, but will help you understand the reasons for the tiers.

[cut]

The figures are the revenue that flows to Canonical from sales that you make. These sales can be made up from the range of Canonical services and future product offerings.
These may look initially high, but we have set the bar for the highest level quite high intentionally. Any partner that reaches gold tier has really earned it.

We have based the tiers on revenue to alleviate any potential entry fee to the programme.

I can’t really understand if we’ll have to pay to remain affiliate or not… anyway I hope more info will be given us.

The idea

We said “hey, if we’ll have to pay, let’s try building some real business on Ubuntu, so we can remain affiliate”.
Working on UCK the idea was easy, build a website where people can customize their Ubuntu adding software, language support and many other things and get their brand new shining DVD at home for a price.

I wanted to call that buildyourubuntu.com. It seem to us that’s really a good name, you can understand what the service do and that’s what we want.

A good business must have a good name, a good business would bring us revenue and we would give part of them to Canonical (we haven’t decided prices and revenues yet) for the affiliate program and would keep alive our free projects and maybe build other new free services.

The problem

Ubuntu is a trademark, we can’t use that name without a license.
We write to Canonical trademarks team.

The answer

After 3 weeks we get a “NO, you can’t use that name for your business, you could for a free service but not for a business one”.
Why? Because it could seem too “official” meaning “related to Canonical”.

Our delusion

How would you call a service that build a custom Ubuntu for you? Oh I don’t want to hear flickr/scriptaculous clones please.

The point is, I think I can say we do fair play with free software, it’s not right to avoid us the possibility to create a new original service that would also bring money to Ubuntu itself.

Sure we can call that service “BuildYourOs.com” or “BuildYourDistro.com” or “BuildYourLinux.com” but:

1. it’s not clear: you can’t understand we’re ONLY talking about Ubuntu
2. it’s simply ugly, if you work in marketing tell me if I’m wrong
3. Linux is a trademark too thus you must gain a license to use the Linux name

Is my love for Ubuntu ruined?

Actually I don’t know, I’m feeling really sad right now.

Maybe I’m a bit too enthusiast but… some posts ago I was telling about some far future hopes for UCK and now I find that I’ve already implemented 3/4 of them:

• easier way to interrupt the process and finish it in another session
• easier way to script its parts (customizing the root file system, the initrd, the cdrom)
• support for the “alternate” ubuntu cd-rom

the auto squashfs sort can wait for now, I’m waiting for an answer from the reconstructor team about a possible integration but actually I think we should release UCK before talking about that.

After the latest changes in the code, was really easy to drop the patches system during the deb package building phase. Those patches were quite difficult to maintain and I couldn’t wait to drop them. Now the deb package deploy will be times easier and faster.

:)

My latest commit in the UCK repository I added a couple of scripts to support the remastering of alternate cds.

To rebuild an Ubuntu alternate cd now you can do this:


sudo ./uck-remaster-unpack-iso ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso
sudo ./uck-remaster-prepare-alternate


do your customizations and copy the packages that you need to add to the cd


sudo ./uck-remaster-finalize-alternate your-gpg-key-id
sudo ./uck-remaster-pack-iso


GPG key id is needed cause we need to re-sign the repositories.

Here we go! Nice hu?

Another small thing I implemented in the last days:

• uck-remaster-unpack-initrd and uck-remaster-pack-initrd now automatically detect if you’re customizing an alternate cd and put the files in the right places

I’m really happy now cause I have something (this new UCK) that’s very flexible to work with and I’m getting big results customizing Ubuntu cds.

If you don’t know it, read the beginning of the story.

This is the 3rd week I’m waiting for an answer, will someone ever answer me? Also Mark alert seems not to gave me priority.

It seems to me that the “startup” term is loosing his meaning.

I love Ubuntu but I’m starting to think that Canonical only like free (as in beer) (mine are ubuntu italian iso, ufficiozero, UCK) contributes and not commercial services (the one I’m requesting the trademark license for).

UCK and reconstructor are both good software to create a customized Ubuntu derivative.

I’m working hard on UCK in these days thus you can expect big changes soon, but I’m also a user of reconstructor and I can do some considerations, in this post I’l talk about the next UCK release so maybe you can think that something I’m saying is wrong but that’s because you’re still working with the old UCK.

• UCK is bash scripting, reconstructor is python GTK. For some things UCK is easier to script and customize because many users know bash, less know python
• reconstructor does many things that UCK doesn’t: gnome environment customization, alternate cd customization are just two examples
• UCK can used to automatically generate ISOs without user interaction
• UCK has a nice support to install language packs and customize gfxboot language selections
• reconstructor has a nicer GUI also if it’s GTK only, UCK GUI can be used within CLI/GTK/QT environment thanks to dialog/zenity/kdialog but we can’t build complex UI with those tools

So what are the conclusions? Both projects have the same goals, both have a common part of code that could be reused.

The next UCK version will bring a good set of small scripts that everyone can call to do every single task of a remastering, thus my thought is that UCK should concentrate on the back-end scripts and reconstructor on the GUI. I hope for the future that reconstructor could drop his back-end scripts and use UCK’s ones, working together to bring better software for everyone.

If you want, check out the development version of UCK.

Taken from this article on businessweek:

Dell Inc. has agreed to work with Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. under an alliance the rival software makers formed last year to make it easier for the Windows operating system and the increasingly popular Linux system to work together

Dell surely have its own reasons to choose Ubuntu for the desktop and Novell for the server but… could it be that Microsoft was not too happy for the Dell/Ubuntu partnership [...]?

Dell (ubuntu-pc) and Intel (ubuntu mobile) have just signed some sort of partnership with Canonical/Ubuntu, but I’m asking myself why now and why Ubuntu?

I think the answer is composed by two parts:

1. Ubuntu has a solid company behind (and also a big community, but NOT ONLY a community)
2. Ubuntu was created in the name of freedom (I hope the trademark issue will be resolved in the near future)

We also had other big Linux companies such as Red Hat and Novell but the real difference between them and Ubuntu is freedom, Ubuntu has always released every part of its system as free software, unlike the others did.

Well, actually there’s also debian which lies behind Ubuntu and that’s a good thing but I don’t really think Dell and Intel cares about debian

I think Dell and Intel care about interacting with a big company and not just with a community, wich would not help maintaining a solid relationship with business based target, but they also care about trusting in the products, and what’s better than free software? Free licenses give partners a major stability about the future for fund investments for the many reasons we all know.

That’s why Ubuntu wins the race, now all the others should adapt their business and re-enter the race

Will Linux die in 2018?

Someone doesn’t think so and I’m really glad about that :)

You want to start a commercial website, you want to spread the the Ubuntu word and you’re already involved in some Ubuntu related free initiatives (let’s say you’re also an Ubuntu affiliate).

You’ve to decide the name of your business (and the website domain too) and we all know how much relevance this task has in the future success of the business itself.

You and your marketing team decide that “hey-you-have-ubuntu-we-can-do-things-for-you.com” (it’s just an example :P) it’s the right one, but… hey Ubuntu is a trademark, we can’t use that name!

So what? Let’s take a look at the Ubuntu trademark policy, it’s a long text but we’ve to read it all but we note:

it is very unlikely that we will approve Trademark use in the following cases:
- Use of a Trademark in a company name
- Use of a Trademark in a domain name which has a commercial intent

But you think “Hey I’m not going to steal Ubuntu identity or capitalize on Ubuntu name, I’m just building an Ubuntu based service” so any marketer would never suggest you a different name (for your website, you can change the company name, that’s not the problem) because it’s too effective and any alternative won’t work.

So you write to the Ubuntu trademarks team asking if you can use the name, Ubuntu knows you’re in good faith cause they know your free projects and Ubuntu advocancy but… I still haven’t got back a complete answer to my mail thus… updates will come (I hope soon!).

OK I know that the title of the post has “free software” but a commercial service promoting a free project (support or anything else) it’s always a good thing for the project, or am I wrong? Thus my question is “trademarks and free software can live together?” It could be good to protect a fraud service using the protected name but it also is a limitation for an enterprise level growth of services.

PS: Remember that Ubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.