Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu, announced the Ubuntu trademark policy in his blog on April 25. Shuttleworth also explained why the Ubuntu leadership felt it had to create such a policy. "Classically, 'software freedom' was about the copyright license associated with the code. But patents and trademarks are now being brought into the mix. For example, the discussion around Mozilla's trademark policy was directly linking the concept of "freedom" to trademark policy as much as code copyright license," Shuttleworth wrote
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Ubuntu's trademark policy opens by stating what's covered by the policy. "Canonical owns a number of trademarks and these include UBUNTU, KUBUNTU, EDUBUNTU, and XUBUNTU. The trademarks are registered in both word and logo form. Any mark ending with the letters UBUNTU or BUNTU is sufficiently similar to one or more of the trademarks that permission will be needed in order to use it."
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The trademark policy then goes on to give an example of using Remix. "For instance, a new ISO image which has been packaged special tools for software developers could be called 'Ubuntu, Developers Remix,' or an image has been created with Thai language packs could be called 'Ubuntu Thai Remix.' Words such as 'Edition' and 'Version' should be avoided, as they have specific meaning within the Ubuntu project. Prefixes, such as 'ThaiBuntu' should also be avoided. Any other naming scheme will require explicit permission."
This implies that independent, Ubuntu-based community distributions projects such as Fluxbuntu, which uses the lightweight Fluxbox windows manager; Ubuntu Studio, a Ubuntu-based distribution for media creators; and Elbuntu, which uses the Enlightenment windows manager, will need to ask for permission from Ubuntu to continue under their present names.
