What 'officially'(?) constitutes a linux distro?

[poltak]

Hi guys. Just a small question:

What actually makes a Linux distro a distro? As in, what makes Ubuntu "Ubuntu" and not just "heavily-modified Debian"?

I mean, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of distros available, but a good majority (from what I've seen and used) are all based on other distros, which in turn are probably based on other distros, and so on... and some distros really don't have a lot of difference to their "parent" distro.

For example, could anyone just take Ubuntu, change the theme a bit, change the logos and the default packages and release it as their own Linux distro?

Thanks for your time xoxoxo

[Agent ME]

I would probably define a distro as something having its own maintained repositories or official software sources.