On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 9:53 PM, Mayan Choudhary <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I hope this is the correct forum for this discussion. If not please point > me to the correct ilist and ignore this email. > > I have been doing some reading on legal issues in selling open source OS ( > Fedora / Ubuntu ). However I still have some questions unanswered. I tried > contacting both Canonical and RedHat but did not get any response from them > . Below are some of my queries which hopefully I might be able to find > answers to on this ilist : > > * Can I sell ubuntu/fedora as it is on my website. I would not directly be > selling the OS but only the services around it . However can I have the OS > uploaded on my website ? It depends on the OS. This would be the equivalent of mirroring free or for a small charge e.g. selling DVDs of the ISO files. The community versions (to the best of my knowledge) can be distributed w/o any approval. This may not hold true for the commercial versions from Redhat and Novell, they give eval versions with keys for trials. Each distro has some kind of distribution policy, you should read that policy. > Also is it illegal to say that "Our company XYZ > provides support for Ubuntu/Fedora ? No but you cannot claim that you are some kind of partner with the respective company unless you have a proper paper contract. > > * Can I use their logos on my website without Canonical/RedHat's consent ? Wow, these are trade marks. Suppose you had a company with a logo upon which you have spend time/money to build a brand name. Would you like some un-associated entity to use your logo? Short answer NO. > > * In order to use Ubuntu/Fedora do I have to get rid of all the > Ubuntu/Fedora logos from the ISO and then upload it on the website ? Read the distribution policy of respective distro, there is no one blanket answer that covers everything. > There are lot of apps to create a ubuntu based distro however I was > wondering if there is one which can let us get rid of only the Logos/Splash > Screen. The ones we see during installation and during boot and all the > other that are there on the system ) . Look at the CentOS model which is binary compatible of RHEL without the trade mark / logos > * Any other trademark violation that I should be looking at ? Consult a lawyer who specializes in patent, trade mark, intellectual property etc. (seriously). We are mostly techies here. > > * Any more questions that I should be asking ? A competent lawyer should be able to help with this. -- Arun Khan Sent from my non-iphone/non-android device (অরুণ খান্/अरुण खान) _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
