It appears that Canonical have gone to war with anyone who mentions the word "Ubuntu" in a way they don't like: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/canonical-abused-trademark-law-to-target-a-site-critical-of-ubuntu-privacy/
Normally we take a relaxed approach to trademarks. We use them, expecting that in the cases where trademark law gives the trademark holder a say, the holder approves of our uses, which we think are unobjectionable. The flipside is that when we receive lawyer letters over trademarks, where the trademark holder is preventing us from doing something we consider essential for software freedom, we rename things. Naturally we should apply that same principle for the benefit of our downstreams: if we discover that someone is being bullied by the trademark holder, we should protect them by preemptively renaming things. Of course "Ubuntu" is not software in Debian. But much software in Debian does refer to Ubuntu somehow. And now it appears that Canonical is widly overreaching. So perhaps, to protect our downstreams, we should grep our entire source base for the word "ubuntu" and replace it with something else. The first step would probably be a mass bug filing. Ian. (Posted to -project because I'm writing with my tongue in my cheek. Actually renaming and rewording things would be making our own life difficult to spite Canonical. Much better to stick up two fingers. But nevertheless, I would like to suggest that the DPL contact Mark Shuttleworth and tell him that this kind of shit is very damaging to our good relationship.) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
