[lubuntu-users] lubuntu social media page shut down because of legal threats from Rafael Laguna

Simon Quigley tsimonq2 at lubuntu.me
Tue Dec 26 23:35:05 UTC 2017


Hello Mario,

Before I give my response to you and my statement as the current Lubuntu
Team Lead, I would like to put forward a few quotes from the Ubuntu Code
of Conduct and Canonical's Intellectual Property statement to keep in
mind while reading my email.

From the Ubuntu Code of Conduct:

> We strive to:
> 
>   '''Be considerate.'''
> 
>   Our work will be used by other people, and we in turn will depend on
>   the work of others. Any decision we take will affect users and
>   colleagues, and we should consider them when making decisions.

<snip />

>   '''Be collaborative.'''
> 
>   What we produce is a complex whole made of many parts, it is the sum
>   of many dreams. Collaboration between teams that each have their own
>   goal and vision is essential; for the whole to be more than the sum
>   of its parts, each part must make an effort to understand the whole.
> 
>   Collaboration reduces redundancy and improves the quality of our
>   work. Internally and externally, we celebrate good collaboration.
>   Wherever possible, we work closely with upstream projects and others
>   in the free software community to coordinate our efforts.
> 
>   We prefer to work transparently and involve interested parties as
>   early as possible.

<snip />

>   '''Step down considerately.'''
> 
>   When somebody leaves or disengages from the project, we ask that
>   they do so in a way that minimises disruption to the project. They
>   should tell people they are leaving and take the proper steps to
>   ensure that others can pick up where they left off.

<snip />

> '''Courage and considerateness'''
> 
> Leadership occasionally requires bold decisions that will not be
> widely understood, consensual or popular. We value the courage to take
> such decisions, because they enable the project as a whole to move
> forward faster than we could if we required complete consensus.
> Nevertheless, boldness demands considerateness; take bold decisions,
> but do so mindful of the challenges they present for others, and work
> to soften the impact of those decisions on them. Communicating changes
> and their reasoning clearly and early on is as important as the
> implementation of the change itself.

From Canonical's Intellectual Property statement:

> You will require Canonical’s permission to use: (i) any mark ending with
> the letters UBUNTU or BUNTU which is sufficiently similar to the Trademarks> or any other confusingly similar mark, and (ii) any Trademark in a domain
> name or URL or for merchandising purposes.

Therefore, Canonical Limited is the rightful owner of the Lubuntu Trademark.

From here on, I speak as the Lubuntu Team Lead.

On 12/26/2017 05:16 AM, Mario Behling wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> is this supposed to be Christmas present? Please see the Trademark
> complaint of Rafael below. 

For the sake of transparency I would like to note that this was an
action taken not on behalf of Rafael directly but on behalf of the
Lubuntu Team/Project.

> This is making me very sad. The idea of Free and Open Source software
> was always to be inclusive and get others on board and build something
> open and free, where everyone can engage in.

Lubuntu as a project agrees with the notion that collaboration is
essential to any successful project, but the way you have been
displaying a lack of collaboration is contrary to the beliefs that
Lubuntu and Ubuntu has been founded on.

> Rafael & Co, why you are moving content to a closed site instead of
> keeping it up to date on the wiki?

The difference between Lubuntu.me and Lubuntu.net/org is that Lubuntu.me
is currently accessible by every single team lead within Lubuntu with
the exception of Unit193 as IRC lead, which we would be happy to grant
access to without hesitation if he wished (but he has declined). It is
the officially recognized (
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu-flavours ) site where Lubuntu
publishes announcements which we, as a collaborative and open team, deem
are necessary to get out to users (and sometimes, we like to involve our
users in various projects that we are working on, including things like
artwork changes, new resources, etc.). The domain also rightfully is
under the control of Canonical Limited, who owns the trademark (and thus
should hold the domain) and we are in the process of transferring the
Wordpress site over to official Canonical Limited infrastructure.

On the other hand, Lubuntu.net/org is not accessible (despite your
claims) by any active member of the Lubuntu Team, is hosted on
infrastructure that is completely out of our control, and only makes
announcements when there is a new release of Lubuntu (which, by the way,
on Lubuntu.net/org, was published several days after the release, and
had the same content which was published on our official website) which
led dozens of users to contact us asking why we did not publish Lubuntu
17.10. This has crossed a boundary where it became detrimental to our users.

> lubuntu.net <http://lubuntu.net>
> always directed people to community resources, but you want to control
> things and redirect wiki pages more and more to your closed site? This
> is not what a community project is about in my view. This project has
> become all about control now. Community resources are neglected and a
> small closed group controls central resources, that are - closed.

This is, in fact, absolutely false. As I said before, every team lead
which has requested access to the site has been given so without
question or hesitation. Even in this case, when people point out flaws
or suggestions in our official Telegram/IRC channel (which you are not a
part of) or to any one of us privately or publicly through the variety
of platforms that we are on, we are very prompt in fixing it without
question or hesitation, and will thank them for helping us make the site
better. What the Lubuntu Project considers "closed", in fact, is your
Lubuntu.net/org website, which no team member has access to, and only
posts announcements when you feel like it. You also do not link to
community resources, with the exception of the Ubuntu Forums.

> Next: People and universities who want put up content, videos and pages
> about lubuntu are getting threats of legal action. This project should
> be open and inclusive the way it was started!

Again, Lubuntu agrees that this should be open and inclusive, and the
only videos that have been officially taken down by the request of a
team member acting on Lubuntu's behalf are the ones which impersonate
Lubuntu in a way which we have (collaboratively and publicly) decided
that they are detrimental to users, for example, videos which show
Lubuntu.net/org as the official website and take time to endorse it,
which is not factual, and misleads users. If this can be resolved
peacefully, we have done so. But there is no such case that I am aware
of that videos have forcefully have been taken down without talking to
the creator, besides any you might have posted on the "Lubuntu" YouTube
channel that impersonates Lubuntu and infringes on our trademark. (There
is a stark difference between reporting of Lubuntu (positive or
negative) as an outside source and trying to impersonate Lubuntu and
post videos on our behalf. The Lubuntu Project does not tolerate the
latter, while the former can be solved if there is even a problem at all.)

> Here are suggestions, what needs to be done to fix community resources.

The community resources which you refuse to link to on your unofficial site?

> Who is interested to help?
> 
> * The distribution has become unstable for a lot of people (check out
> social media!) - we need a developers, that also contribute to upstream
> projects and develop new ideas. 

Please link bug reports that you have filed about this. If you were a
member of the Lubuntu Team acting collaboratively, or if you have
participated in mailing list discussions at all within the past year
(easily) pertaining to testing of a new release, you would know that
this is the proper way to report any issues with Lubuntu.

Also, the current Lubuntu Team is very actively involved with the LXQt
project, and somewhat involved with the LXDE project (because Lubuntu
plans to move to LXQt).

> * The bloated wiki with lots of broken images needs to be cleaned up or
> a new community resource needs to come up. (I will provide my take on
> this later.)

We are already in the process of overhauling this, and are in the
planning stages of moving our official wiki presence to our (open,
available for anyone to register) Phabricator site at phab.lubuntu.me.

> * Lots of groups that had been founded to simply show off "I am in a
> group" and get people an ubuntu.com <http://ubuntu.com> email addresses
> are inactive and the groups are often irrelevant. They should be dissolved.

Except that you simply don't seem to understand what an Ubuntu Member is
and represents. Several members of the (official) Lubuntu Team are on
the Ubuntu Community Council-delegated board called the Ubuntu
Membership Board. From the wiki page ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership ):

> Official Ubuntu Membership means recognition of significant and sustained
> contribution to Ubuntu or the Ubuntu community.

Being an Ubuntu Member is not a prerequisite to be a member of the
community, except where it pertains to leadership positions which are
already established and are elected by Ubuntu Members or where it
pertains to giving a contributor membership. So your statement is
absolutely false, and really, goes to show that you haven't been an
active participant in the Lubuntu community for a while now. (I wouldn't
normally bring this up as a counterpoint, but it seems to me that you
expect to be able to hop right back in as a Team Lead or a Release
Manager after you left the project years ago, which will not be the case.)

-------

> * Outdated documentation, which has become unusable needs to be cleaned up
> * Documentation which is just directing to Ubuntu and irrelevant for
> lubuntu needs to be changed
Again, we are in the process of working on this. Had you been in the
open, collaborative Lubuntu community recently, you would know that we
have been discussing this.
> * Links that are redirecting to closed sites should be taken out and
> content should be on the wiki itself

I agree, could you help us get Lubuntu.net/org entirely off of the
Ubuntu Wiki and the Ubuntu Community Help wiki?

> It seems a number of people have moved on to other channels from this
> list already, but it would be great to read, what ideas people who are
> still here have to get this project to the next level instead of wasting
> time on legal threats.
> 
> If you are interested in those topics, please join the dedicated team to
> follow up here: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-x
> 
> ... Still cannot believe that legal threats are used like that in the
> Free Software community.
> 
> Very sad :(

What you seem to fail to understand is that we have been attempting to
get your closed site, Lubuntu.net/org, into official, open, Lubuntu Team
hands for more than a year now. But once 17.10 was out of the way, and
after several discussions with the Ubuntu Community Council, both public
and private, we decided to take legal action as a last resort. For the
sake of transparency (and since this does not include replies from
Legal), this was our email:

> Hello Canonical Legal Team,
> 
> When Lubuntu was first started, the team, driven by Mario Behling and
> Julien Lavergne, created Lubuntu.net and Lubuntu.org (the latter of
> which redirects to the former). These were registered, hosted and
> updated by Mario. Mario has since left the project but has retained
> control of these domains, leaving the active Lubuntu Team with no access
> to the site which those domains are pointed towards.
> 
> Originally this was not an issue, because Mario had kept the content
> up-to-date, but over time this has changed, especially in terms of the
> graphic design which is well behind our evolving design. As these sites
> are #1 on search results on multiple search engines they are a critical
> place to get announcements and news out to our users. It has become
> extremely detrimental that we do not have control of this domain because
> it leaves our users confused and with the impression that Lubuntu is not
> as active of a project as it is, given that announcements are only
> posted by Mario when we have a new release of Lubuntu. Those updates are
> also notoriously late and no pleading on the part of the Lubuntu Team
> appears to have any effect on that aspect.
> 
> We have attempted to reach out to Mario requesting various solutions all
> of which he has dismissed or denied. We started by asking for access,
> but as that never came to fruition, we became frustrated and decided to
> create Lubuntu.me. This domain is now owned by Canonical and we're
> working to get them to host it as well. We asked him to redirect his
> domains to ours, but again he refused.
> 
> We have tried other solutions to try to resolve this. Most notably, we
> have reached out to the Ubuntu Community Council, who has not had
> success in talking with Mario to get the domain back. He claims that we
> already have access to the site, but refuses to tell us how we can edit
> content on it at all or even how to connect and authenticate.
> 
> At this point in time, given that the Lubuntu Team does not have access
> to the site and is misleading users in a detrimental way, we feel that
> this is infringement upon the Lubuntu trademark. The Lubuntu Team would
> like to kindly request that legal action be pursued to get the
> Lubuntu.net and Lubuntu.org domains transferred to Canonical ownership.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Simon Quigley on behalf of the Lubuntu Team

After this email was sent, we received a follow-up saying that they
would make some enquiries. After this happened, you:
 1. Stole the artwork and screenshots of Rafael Laguna, who, rightfully,
has explicit written permission to use the Lubuntu trademark, and is the
origin of these images and screenshots.
 2. Created several social media accounts and resources which the
Lubuntu Team has no control over promoting your new site which you stole
the artwork and screenshots from.
 3. FOSSASIA (which, I would like to officially say, has no affiliation
with the official Lubuntu Project in any way, shape, or form) created a
Google Code-In task (while Ubuntu is an official project in Google
Code-In this year, and FOSSASIA made no attempt to contact us about
this), which I will let speak for itself:

> OBJECTIVE
> 
> Please create a screencast video of how to set up or one of the features.
> 
> REQUIREMENTS
> 
>     Join the lubuntu dev project on GitHub.
>     Connect with us on lubuntu-dev Gitter channel
>     Subscribe to the lubuntu YouTube channel.
>     Create a screencast about one of the following: a) Set up of lubuntu, b) multimedia, c) office applications, d) System Settings and Preferences, e) Internet application, f) Graphics and Imaging, g) Accessories, h) Desktop Usage and Configurations.
>     Add comments and explanations during the video in English with your voice.
>     Share the video with your mentor on Google Drive or similar.
>     Work with your mentor to upload the Video on the lubuntu channel on YouTube using a Creative Commons license
>     Send a tweet to @lubuntudesktop @mariobehling @sabdfl @fossasia @linuxfoundation with the video URL and share it on Facebook
> 
> EXPECTED OUTCOME
> 
>     Video screencast on YouTube
>     Shared on Twitter and Facebook
> 
> LINK
> 
> lubuntu Website: https://lubuntu.net lubuntu Download: https://lubuntu.net/downloads lubuntu Documentation: https://docs.lubuntu.net

On the surface it seems to be an innocent task, but it requires the
student to subscribe to "Lubuntu" on a good amount of the social media
accounts you have created.

We have filed complaints with at minimum Facebook, Google+, and YouTube,
because this is the definition of copyright infringement.

Additionally, in respect to the issue about the Lenovo laptop BIOS
problems, while the official Lubuntu Team tweeted about it immediately
after we knew about it (which was before people started reporting about
it, since the Lubuntu Team is in the relevant IRC channels, we knew
about the discussions with the Kernel Team and other relevant people as
they were happening):
https://twitter.com/LubuntuOfficial/status/943277376808595456
Had a representative go on two different shows to talk about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0F0EDqprWk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUQmHFamb1Q
Collaborated with two different Linux sites to report on it:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/ubuntu-17-10-corrupts-the-bios-of-some-lenovo-laptops-respin-isos-coming-soon-519060.shtml
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQdLp_6kt7A

And yet on your end, @lubuntudesktop didn't even at minimum tweet, let
alone post on any other platform, about this until four days after:
https://twitter.com/lubuntudesktop/status/944188057477156864

So this is in fact partly a matter of control, because you are hurting
Lubuntu's users by not keeping our seemingly official yet unofficial
social media presence updated with critical news about the Lubuntu
Project. People could have wasted thousands of dollars while we wait for
a fix, and could forever hate Lubuntu because of it. You haven't even
updated the download page for Lubuntu.net/org either, which, as we
speak, could be driving more and more users away from Lubuntu. All of
this is because Lubuntu doesn't have control of that domain and Twitter
account.

-------

In light of all of this, given that this discussion has been going on
privately for over a year (which is just now becoming public, thanks to
your email), you still insist on your "Lubuntu" resources being in
closed control away from the active team, you have demonstrated time and
time again that you are not willing to collaborate with the Lubuntu Team
and Project, and seemingly are only raising the items you did in this
email just now to try and gain support for your cause, which seems to me
like you are trying to take the Lubuntu project, that we have worked
countless hours on, from our hands. This is unacceptable, and I'd like
to put a stop to it once and for all, so that fragmentation can be
healed and we can move forward as the Lubuntu Project.

For at minimum one year from the sending of this email, you are not and
will not be recognized as a member of the Lubuntu Project. You may
continue to file bugs and use Lubuntu, because it is in fact Free
Software, but until this is lifted, you have no influence in the future
direction of Lubuntu, and we would prefer it if you would stay away from
our IRC channels, mailing lists, and any other resources which we use.
If you would like to appeal this decision, you are welcome to appeal to
the Ubuntu Community Council or Mark Shuttleworth as project sponsor,
CEO of Canonical who holds our trademark, and Self Appointed Benevolent
Dictator For Life of Ubuntu, who are carbon copied in this email.

I would also like to issue a final warning in respect to the domains you
have control of, and of the social media resources you also have control
of. If the official Lubuntu Team Leads, which consists of Walter
Lapchynski, myself, Rafael Laguna, Julien Lavergne, and Unit 193, does
not have control of the resources you have created (a full list is
below) by Sunday, January 7, 2017 at 12:00 UTC, we will continue to
attempt to pursue legal action for copyright infringement.

Please email accurate login information for the following accounts to
wxl at lubuntu.me, tsimonq2 at lubuntu.me, viking.redwolf at ubuntu.com,
gilir at ubuntu.com, and unit193 at ubuntu.com:
 - https://www.facebook.com/lubuntudesktop/
 - https://twitter.com/lubuntudesktop/
 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0nEnI4yt2OCiZwRT0q90tQ/
 - https://plus.google.com/u/0/107909502516592034334

Deletion of the above resources is also sufficient as well.

Please also send an email to rt at ubuntu.com carbon copying
wxl at lubuntu.me, tsimonq2 at lubuntu.me, viking.redwolf at ubuntu.com,
gilir at ubuntu.com, and unit193 at ubuntu.com with all appropriate
information necessary to transfer the Lubuntu.net and Lubuntu.org
domains (including all subdomains) to Canonical Limited's control.

Lastly, please delete this GitHub team and all of the associated
repositories: https://github.com/lubuntu-dev/, delete the Google Code-In
task that was referenced above, and delete the ~lubuntu-x Launchpad team.

We're asking you to step down considerably here, and minimize future
disruption from the perspective of our users. (Because after all, this
is the reason why this has happened in the first place, because we care
about our users having accurate information.)

With regret,
-- 
Simon Quigley
tsimonq2 at lubuntu.me
tsimonq2 on freenode and OFTC
5C7A BEA2 0F86 3045 9CC8
C8B5 E27F 2CF8 458C 2FA4

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