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I'm planning on making a thing that will be based off of Ubuntu as an OS. My thing will have propriety software but will be shipped with Ubuntu and preferably without access to the OS for either snooping and/or customising.

I read somewhere that if I debrand the OS that may be ok.

I understand you're not lawyers etc, just wanting advice before I become too committed.

tl;dr

Can I lockdown the Ubuntu OS and sell a thing running Ubuntu

Follow up question, if the answer is a hard no, is there a distro that will allow this?

Joshua
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    I don't know the GPL too well, but it may be that part of your plans won't be compatible with the tons of GPL'ed software in Ubuntu... – s3lph Jan 12 '16 at 00:28
  • It is very common for commercial products to run linux or be based on linux. As @the_Seppi points out, you may need to strip down the distro quite a bit. At the end of the day, you have some reading to do on Open Source licenses and probably need to get some legal counsel, along with some technical insight very familiar with exactly what you're trying to do, in order to do your due diligence. At the end of the day, a detailed email to Canonical or the Ubuntu dev team may be appropriate. – tniles Jan 12 '16 at 01:51
  • Here's a good place to start re: FOSS licensing education: http://choosealicense.com which is github's tool for helping folks choose their project license. – tniles Jan 12 '16 at 01:53
  • I think the "without access to the OS" is the hardest point. In doing so, you strip the software's user of one of its freedoms: The freedom to change it. This may conflict with the GPL. – s3lph Jan 12 '16 at 01:53
  • I've sent an email to canonical already. Will see how it goes. – Joshua Jan 12 '16 at 01:59

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If you remove the branding, it IS okay. It's not very documented how to debrand it easily though...

Here's a mailing list thread where some folks discuss de-branding.

RobotHumans
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