Is it LEGAL to buy an Ubuntu-Installation CD on Amazon.com?

[monkeybrain20122]

Buying is always legal even if it is illegal to sell.

[TheFu]

For what reason would someone buy it?

They can't use dd?

[jdeca57]

They can't use dd?

Actually - I'm revealing my age - it was perfectly normal to buy something physical in order to justify spending money. Hey, I have this CD / DVD and I paid for it so it's mine. A little bit like music CD's. Did you ever go to a store and claim a new CD because the one you bought is scratched and unusable? Even if you bring a blank CD they won't do that here because the physical medium is what you bought, not the content. OK, now we have Spotify and Netflix and Ubuntu and we think in terms of accounts and content but apparently some people still find worth in a thing they own. Absurd in this case because the software changes quickly and yet it still exists probably because of ignorance and not so much incompetence, they know how to copy.

[1clue]

You're not buying the software, you're paying someone to put it on a working media for you.

You would be well served to verify the reputation of the person/organization selling you the media, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Likewise, you can hire someone to install any open source software and configure it for your use, and you can hire someone to train you how to use the software, and you can hire someone to write more software which interfaces with Open Source software.

You need to be careful about interacting licenses (GNU hooking in with closed source software, for example, if that software were ever to be distributed) but for a one-off you need not worry. If you hire someone to make a module which interfaces with open source software, there's a good chance that others might be interested in it, so you might consider either submitting that software to the people managing that project, or possibly releasing your bit as a separate open source project. It's very easy to do.

If it eases your mind, frequently the makers of well-known FOSS projects earn money by installing their own software in a commercial server. My company has worked with maintainers of FOSS projects, hired/paid them to make new changes to the project, and then that software becomes part of the FOSS project. There is a whole lot of FOSS software which was built under that scenario.