Reselling of Ubuntu CD`s

[minze]

Is this legal ? I see some dude doing just that on a dutch selling site (www.marktplaats.nl)

Those CD's are send free of charge by the ubuntu people, so morally its not right in my eyes anyway.

Any thoughts ?

[Kvark]

Yeah, it is legal. GPL software is free as in freedom so he has the freedom to sell it. Just as any potential buyers has the freedom to get it from somewhere else (download/shipit/copy from friend/etc...) instead of from him.

[minze]

Yeah, it is legal. GPL software is free as in freedom so he has the freedom to sell it. Just as any potential buyers has the freedom to get it from somewhere else (download/shipit/copy from friend/etc...) instead of from him.

Even if his CD's are the shipit CD's (that's what they are) ? If so, Ithink a "only for give away, not sale" label should be on the discs.

btw GPL is free as in speech.

[BWF89]

Even if his CD's are the shipit CD's (that's what they are) ? If so, Ithink a "only for give away, not sale" label should be on the discs.

btw GPL is free as in speech.
Open Source software (OSS) lets you give away or sell a cd with OSS.

A piece of software can be distributed under a liscence that gives you every right as the GPL but if it doesn't let you commercially distribute the software it's not OSS and does not meet the Debian Free Software Standerds (DFSS). And OSS is not included on the Ubuntu cd's so your allowed to do that.

I think even RMS said that if your going to give someone a "GNU/Linux" cd you might as well charge for it and make some cash. My liscence permits it.

EDIT: And what if someone wanted to take the Ubuntu Linux distro and decide to make it into a $50 commercial distro like RedHat or Novell Desktop 9? Are you going to say "No you can't do that because it's not morally right" no. Copyleft and the GPL was written the way it was to make sure businesses could charge and make money off of the "GNU operating system".

[minze]

Open Source software (OSS) lets you give away or sell a cd with OSS.

EDIT: And what if someone wanted to take the Ubuntu Linux distro and decide to make it into a $50 commercial distro like RedHat or Novell Desktop 9? Are you going to say "No you can't do that because it's not morally right" no. Copyleft and the GPL was written the way it was to make sure businesses could charge and make money off of the "GNU operating system".

Actually I wouldn't say no. My point is : someone invested money into getting the ubuntu distro pressed on a disk and gives it away for free (shipit). Now someone else orders them (for free) and then charges other people money for it. It may be legit but it doesnt feel right. He/she is making money of of something that is free.

Making a new distro out of an existing one by adding new inhouse developt utilities is something different to me. If the tools were good I would pay for them. I would also pay for support for that matter.

I'm a programmer by trade so I know money has to be made somewhere ;) But not out of the pockets of the donaters of ubuntu.

Is my thinking that strange ?

[Kvark]

You are right in that even if anyone is free to sell the data on those CDs. It might feel morally wrong to charge a fee for the physical plastic disks shipit sends. The logical border here would be to require the data to be repacked to another medium before sale.

One way for shipit to do that is by forbidding use of their trademark for sale purposes (assuming "shipit" and a logo is stamped somewhere on the CDs). I believe redhat uses their trademark to prevent anyone else from distributing the redhat distro. But in redhat's case it is a lot more work to repack without their trademark then to just reburn it on an unlabelled CD. They got the trademark all over the digital data too.

Another way is to stamp a pricetag of $0.00 on the CDs. Which would make them embarrasing to sell without any legal backup needed. This is what I would do if I was shipit and had problems with people selling the plastic disks I give away for free as in beer.

[rattaro]

I'm a programmer by trade so I know money has to be made somewhere ;) But not out of the pockets of the donaters of ubuntu.

Is my thinking that strange ?

No, but "value" is a subjective thing. Sometimes, when you charge for something, it's more valuable than something given for free. I say let people sell what they want. Free as in freedom. Now if they start using the code in proprietary settings without fulfilling the GPL obligations, then I'm mad, because that's against the rules. Selling free cd's is not.

[BWF89]

You are right in that even if anyone is free to sell the data on those CDs. It might feel morally wrong to charge a fee for the physical plastic disks shipit sends. The logical border here would be to require the data to be repacked to another medium before sale.
If someone is really serious in the Ubuntu distro they would have allready went to Ubuntu.com and if they spent any time at the site at all they would have seen that you can order a shitload of them for free. Theres a link that says "Shipit- Free CD's" right there on the upper left hand side. So if they don't like getting "ripped off" as you put it they should put out some effort and do a little researching before they spend their hard earned cash on something.

Besides what if someone doesn't want to wait 6 months for the CD's to arrive via Shipit and has a 56k modem and doesn't want to spend 22 hours downloading a distro. Especially if there are other people in the house who want to use the computer? Ordering Linux cd's might be the difference between useing the distro and sticking with Windows.

[poptones]

He/she is making money of of something that is free.

Kind of like those folks who put a bottling plant over a spring and sell all that "free" water?

The GPL is not there to deprive people of income.

[minze]

Another way is to stamp a pricetag of $0.00 on the CDs. Which would make them embarrasing to sell without any legal backup needed. This is what I would do if I was shipit and had problems with people selling the plastic disks I give away for free as in beer.

It might even solve the customs problem some people are having with customs.

[TristanMike]

Yeah, I suppose you could make tons of arguments on why the GPL allows a person to resell and blah, blah, blah.

Personally, if someone is given a product in the spirit of kindness, with no strings attached, no fee's, nothing, it is pretty low to sell what was given to you for free, that, to me, doesn't capture the spirit at all. What are they paying for? The waiting time? Now, if they even so much as pressed their own cd's with the downloaded image, or even something like straight copy, fine, so be it, but to take someone else's products and resell them, well, gosh darn it, that's just wrong. You may be able to do it legally, but I don't think you should.

[ecky]

I am strictly against this reselling thing. I have seen people offering it on Ebay Germany, too - the same CD's that are shipped for free through Shipit. Not only do this guys make money out of the Community's intellectual property - they do also fool their customers in that these customers could get the CD's for free! This is not a good advertisement for free software at all...

If this is what comes out of shipit, I think Canonical should stop this service and start to sell pressed CD's rather than give them away for free.

[nikopol]

If this is what comes out of shipit, I think Canonical should stop this service and start to sell pressed CD's rather than give them away for free.

I don't think this is the majority of what is coming out of Shipit - there's loads of people who have been very grateful to receive the CDs for free (esp. in areas where brodband access is not that prevalent). Now this guy making money (if he has found someone likely to buy it at that price - TBH I doubt he's had much success since if you know about Ubuntu you're very likely to know you can get if for free) is bad but supposing I really wanted a copy of Ubuntu and didn't want to have to wait for ShipIt and had no BB access? in this case, it would be nice to be able to buy it.

On the plus side, if you check out the site now, there's lots of people responding to this mercantile attempt by offering CDs for free - kind of restores your faith in people...

[John.Michael.Kane]

I sent for only the amount i needed from ship-it any one i know who wants to try ubuntu i would just burn them a copy of the cd versions i have,, as you can see the selling of these cd's is massive.. it's happing to gentoo ect

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&catref=C6&satitle=debian&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=ZIP%2FPostal&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&satitle=gentoo&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=ZIP%2FPostal&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search&fgtp=
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2 F&fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=ubuntu&category0=

[Foaming Draught]

My first foray into Linux was by buying a set of Mandrake CDs off eBay. It cost around $10 (AUD) including postage, so I reckoned that the bandwidth and time which I saved was well worth it, I didn't begrudge paying the entrepreneur who had copied the CDs. Now my mastery of computing has extended to burning my own .iso images :) I don't need to buy them from eBay.
It is yucky for ubuntu's evangelistic distribution of free CDs to be exploited by re-sellers, but their morally questionable motives have a morally good consequence, the ubuntu user community grows.

[Galoot]

Pah. Sell what you want. If you order a large amount via shipit, my understanding is that they'll contact you to ask why.

I have a neighbor who sells driftwood to tourists who know darned well they'd only have to drive another hour west to get the same thing for free. Maybe it's a bit of a con, but it's no big deal.

[dusanyu]

this person is not selling the ubuntu cd's

content of the page translated Bare in mind this was babblefish:)


Price: Free

Date: 29-09-05, 17.33

Given: 4 time

Description:


For free to take away: Ubuntu Linux 5.04. in original packing. It are 2 cd's. An installation cdrom and live a cd.

Can send also. The verzendkosten come for the account of the purchaser? 3, -Kindest taking away.

[dhayfule]

Actually Canonical does offer CDs for sale too...

Shipit doesnt provide CDs quickly. So Canonical has appointed Authorized CD Distributors who actually "Purchase" CDs from Canonical and then resell it locally. They also sell CDs to general public through their own shop.

Just have a look at http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/cds

Actually "Free" implies that the Operating System and its software are Free, but one can still charge for the services and the distribution Media.

In facte even I am an Authorized CD distributor for India, who has to purchase a pack of atleast 20 CDs from Canonical. And being a distributor I cannot get the Free CDs

[Elfy]

Closed.

Rather on the old side :p