Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/10/20/open-letter-to-mark.html

I
was glad
to read today that Sam Varghese is reporting that Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t
want Canonical, Ltd. to engage in business models that abuse
proprietary relicensing powers in a negative way. I wrote below a
brief open letter to Mark for him to read when he returns from UDS
(since the article said he would handle this in detail upon his return from
there). It’s fortunate that there is a simple test to see if Mark’s
words are a genuine commitment for change by Canonical, Ltd. There’s a
simple action he can take to show if means to follow through on his
statement:

Dear Mark,

I was glad to read today that you have no plans to abuse the powers of
proprietary relicensing
that Canonical, Ltd’s.
CAAs/CLAs give you. As you are hopefully already aware, Richard
Stallman
published a
few suggested texts to use if you are attempting to only consider
benign business models as part of your CAA/CLA process. Since you’ve
committed to that, I would expect you’d be ready, willing and able to
adopt those immediately for Canonical, Ltd.’s, CLAs and CAAs. When will
you do so?

Thanks very much for taking my criticisms seriously and I look forward
to seeing this change soon in Canonical, Ltd.’s CAAs and/or CLAs.