Ubuntu Business Remix update

[Iain Lane]

Hello,

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 09:41:35AM +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Hi folk
> 
> Allison made me aware of an off-list discussion amongst the TB
> regarding the Business Remix. Here's an update from my perspective,
> and to avoid further confusion please keep me and/or the CC in the
> loop on similar conversations in future.

The release team was included too.

> […]
>  * Steve Langasek raised a concern with me, that Partner might not
> be considered "part of Ubuntu" for remix purposes. That was a
> surprise to me, and is a simple omission rather than intended
> outcome. We index Partner packages in the Software Center - they are
> as much part of Ubuntu as multiverse it - they reflect packages
> where redistribution is not possible, and Canonical has to be
> directly involved as a contractual requirement of the ISV. We should
> simply clarify this in the remix guidelines if it is an issue.

This is where we have problems. As far as Ubuntu developers are
concerned, these packages are very much not as much of a part of Ubuntu
as the rest of the archive. They live on archive.canonical.com, not
archive.ubuntu.com. They're managed by Canonical employees, without (as
far as I am aware) any way for the community to get involved. Most
importantly, there are (secret) commercial agreements in place between
Canonical and the ISVs in question that govern distribution. The rights
that users receive are not the same as those they get from software in
the main archive.

Don't get me wrong, partner is a valuable service to its users, it's
just that it is fundamentally different to the Ubuntu archive as far as
I can see. It's a service that Canonical provides for Ubuntu, sure, but
that doesn't make it a part of Ubuntu itself.

For a long time this was considered a bug in Launchpad, but Scott K
closed it in response to the mail I am replying to.

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/153798

Cheers,

-- 
Iain Lane                                  [ iain at orangesquash.org.uk ]
Debian Developer                                   [ laney at debian.org ]
Ubuntu Developer                                   [ laney at ubuntu.com ]
PhD student                                       [ ial at cs.nott.ac.uk ]
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