Creating a Linux Distribution and ownership
 

My company has been engaged by another company to create a Linux distribution for them, something they can re-sale. I understand well the need to provide sources and stuff like that, we've been doing this kind of stuff for ourselves for years, as well as managing a number of FOSS projects.

The distribution will include some proprietary code.

So here is the rub, the client has a Lawyer that although she is supposed to be a GPL expert, misses the mark by a bit. The question is, when creating a new distribution, how is ownership assigned? She is saying that the client can't own the distribution because of the many licenses and copyrights involved. I disagree with her, and tell her that we can convey ownership of the "Distribution" the entirety. Although there might be many owners of many files, once it is packaged as a distribution, ownership of that "collection" so to speak can be assigned. If not how is it that SuSE, RedHat, Mandriva etc "own" their distributions?

Can anybody point me in the right direction for this, and please don't point me to the gpl because it really doesn't fit in this case.

Thanks
Garret

I would have to say that the Free Software Foundation would be the people to ask.

It's perfectly legal to sell GPLed software as long as you release any changes or additions under the same liscense. A company can't actually own a linux distrobution. They own the proprietary code included in it. Suse has Yast, Linspire has Click 'N Run, etc.

See, this is the perception I am fighting. SuSE, Redhat, Linspire etc ALL claim ownership of their respective distributions. They all claim ownership of the "collection" and have in fact placed copyright around it. Check out some of the EULAs and you'll see what I am saying.

Garret

No. What these companies say is that they own the name, logos and any proprietary software in the distro. If they owned everything there wouldn't be things like the CentOS project, which is Red Hat with all the logos, etc stripped out and replaced by CentOS ones.

I didn't say they owned "everything". It is no different that a company making a short story book comprised of stories by different authors (with their permission of course). Go find one, the copyright for the "collection" is that of the company who created the "collection".

From the SuSE EULA: . . The Software is a collective work of Novell...

From the way I understand it, if I read Wikipedia correctly on this subject, as long as you release the software under the same licence you got it under, then your allowed to do it, right? So if your new OS was a Debian off-shoot, then you would have to release your OS under the same licence that Debian gave you thiers.

Exactly. And I would be clear to add my own apps, my icons etc, call it My Special Linux and through that process and the magic of copyright, I "own" a Linux distribution. It does NOT mean I own all of the parts and pieces, it means that I "own" what I created from those parts and pieces. The GPL and some other licenses makes this possible.

You will also need to grep all of the source code to make sure that all the software is covered by the licence that you think it is. If this company isn't the author of the propriety code you mentioned, then you may need to make separate arrangements with the authors of that code, unless their license allows you to include it. Perhaps, such code is included in a boxed set, and license fees apply, but the download version doesn't contain them.

Also look into trademark issues. SuSE for example doesn't allow it's name or image on a derivative product. I don't know what you would need to do when a trademarked name, such as Gentoo appears in the comments of a configuration or a script, such as perhaps /sbin/mkinitrd. SuSE is derived from RedHat, and the /usr/src/redhat/ directory name was changed to /usr/src/packages/. Whether this was a trademark issue, I don't know.

Great dialog guys, truly appreciated!!

Yes, the the other code we are adding is ours, so we are good there. The lawyer for the client has asked for all licenses that apply to the end product so I am with you there. One thing we have seen in some apps are that trademarked images have been compiled into GPL libraries, so imagine we will have to recompile without the images.

Any other recommendations, suggestions, pitfalls?

Garret