Am Montag, dem 06.10.2025 um 10:09 -0400 schrieb gene heskett: > On 10/6/25 08:38, Stuart Stevenson wrote: > > Is LinuxCNC licensing compatible with Ubuntu? > I've not been aware of any legal things, but it does need some > investigation. I thought ubuntu was gpl?
"ubuntu" in this context mostly is a trademark. licensing of trademark is a different thing from distribution of GPLed works. and of course the GPL doesn't prevent you from charging money for GPLed work, the requirements are basically that you have to include a written offer to provide source code and everybody that legally obtained the software has the right to redistribute the software under identical rights. GPL only concerns modification and distribution (those things are governed by "copyright" in the US). so canonical have the right to charge for a subscription to their "realtime kernel", OTOH they can't prevent their subscribers from redistributing that kernel. so you can redistribute GPLed works as you like, but you can't apply the "ubuntu" label without approval from canonical. more information: https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ so if you want to run linuxcnc on ubuntu (and compiled/obtained a realtime kernel to do that), do it. distributing a thing called "ubuntu linuxcnc install iso" probably will cause trouble. (not legal advice, this is my interpretation, IANAL, blabla). -- Robert Schöftner <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
