Licensing keeps coming up. I’m not an expert, and I recommend hiring an attorney who specializes in open source software licensing if you are intent on doing something for profit.
And the more I think about your situation, you could start out by preparing each computer manually. Worry about doing 100 a day when you have that much volume.
If you’re doing five a week, you can install Silverblue, make your changes and ship them out.
Go for an MVP (minimum viable product) first, then figure out how to scale it. Horse first, then cart.
Welcome to corporate world and entrepreneur business it is not just selling way much more especially legal, licenses, taxes and so much more months of no sleep
having this context would have likely helped you get better answers
im not a lawyer, but i imagine If you’re reselling these laptops at a very low scale (i.e. you picked them up as “junk” and put linux on them and they work again, and youre just selling them on ebay or like as a garage sale) then you may be able to fly under the legal radar.
when you mention terms like OEM, i think people assume youre closer to a Lenovo, that wants to sell laptops as a business entity.
I think if you compiled a full-detail writeup of your specific situation and what you want, that would go a long way towards giving everyone the right context so they can best help you individually rather than giving you the same generic advice of “use ublue” or “talk to council”. Youre liekly getting frustrating generic advice, because people dont want to tell you the wrong thing based on assumptions about your situation because there arent enough details or the details are spread across several threads
I don’t think the average (or above average) Fedora community member has a lot of knowledge on what it takes to do an OEM install of Fedora with modifications.
I freely admit I do not have this knowledge.
I heard @mattdm talk about the Fedora Ready program on the latest Fedora Podcast – I think that’s where the project is focusing as far as working with hardware vendors:
I don’t follow. I’ve linked you to documentation that clearly says you cannot use thee Fedora trademarks if you modify the produced distro in any way. This applies for both mutable and immutable variants. That includes even include extra scripts—anything at all.
Did you read that documentation page? It clearly notes what does and does not require permission. If something is unclear, we can try to clarify it for you.
At this point, I do not think that this needs the council’s involvement. So, let’s please not tag them in posts.
Can I also please ask you to keep each topic focussed on the question. This one was meant to be about “how do I modify silverblue”, but it’s strayed into “am I allowed to do this”? Mixing topics creates confusion and makes it much harder to provide good advice/answers.
I’m not affiliated with Lenovo; I come from a low-income country and, after years of hard work, I’ve managed to live in Europe. However, my wife is struggling to find a job, and our financial situation is quite challenging. I came up with a plan to save 60 euros each month for several months in order to buy used laptops.
I navigated a lot of bureaucratic hurdles in a foreign country to reach this point. After months of dreaming about this moment, I’m finally starting with just two laptops, which is all I could afford. I want to sell Fedora exclusively because I’m passionate about the project and its philosophy.
I don’t give up easily, but I’m also not in a position to maintain an entire distro just to pre-install a few packages and make one tweak. I have no time for that, my financial struggles and health issues are overwhelming.
I simply wanted to know if this was feasible, but if I can’t find any guidance or contact someone for help, I might have to settle for using Ubuntu and unintentionally promoting Snap.
I’m sorry for your personal circumstances. I wish you all the best there.
You don’t have to “maintain an entire distro”, but you do need to learn how to create a customised variant of silverblue, and you will need to have the necessary infrastructure to do these bits.
I’ve said this elsewhere—maintaining and/or customising a whole Linux distribution is not a trivial task. FOSS means everything is available to everyone, not that everyone will have the knowledge, skill, nor infrastructure to use all FOSS.
I have replied there:
To reiterate: silverblue is created somehow, so it can be modified. One needs to learn how it’s created so that they can tweak the process to modify it.
I’m familiar with using rpm-ostree to install, modify, and apply the necessary tweaks, but I don’t have the time to learn how to create a complete image using ublue or to work on the installer and create an ISO.
I want to express my gratitude to everyone who contributed and tried to assist. I will look for a solution, but to be honest, I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about it. It seems I might end up having to preinstall an Ubuntu-based distro like most people do.
You could potentially run into the same hurdle at Ubuntu as well. Unless you strip out all the Ubuntu bits, I’m pretty sure you cannot freely redistribute their trademarks without consent. This includes the Ubuntu logo, and any mention of the Ubuntu name anywhere in the distro.
This would stand for all Distro btw. . . Fedora logo and names, Mint, OpenSuse etc. . .
if you are in doubt, look at how Tuxedo, Pop_OS, DELL ( Ubuntu derivative ) or Lenovo, Nobara ( Fedora ). If in doubt, reach out to them and find out how they are able to redistribute the OS.
Potential pivot that may help you avoid the pitfalls of distributing a machine with any linux-based distro on it (for which you’ll likely face hurdles): would doing computer repair work be similar enough to what you want to do?
Some now-well known repairpeople such as Louis Rossmann here in the US got their start by meeting people in public parks and helping them diagnose and fix their computers in front of them to build up trust and money until he was able to move into a physical shop and invest in more equipment. Louis in particular publishes a lot of his repair videos on YouTube. WHile they may be pretty advanced for the stage you are at, you could possibly start with helping people replace their phone screens using parts and tools from ifixit or other parts suppliers in your area.
Hope things work out! Maybe in the meantime you can install fedora on those laptops and use them yourself to provide services (web hosting, formatting USB drives, and other basic things) to other people. That way you aren’t distributing Fedora but still able to turn that laptop investment into an income stream.
Thank you! I believe that selling laptops with Linux Mint or ZorinOS preinstalled should be fine, as long as the codecs are not included by default.
However, that’s not a concern since users can easily install them afterward with a single click, and the Steam Debian package will take care of installing steam-devices automatically.
Unfortunately, Silverblue has limitations due to its layering system, and it appears I’m not permitted to make any modifications for distribution. Nevertheless, they will still be Linux machines.
Here is what you should do. Don’t use atomic versions. There is no reason to. It just makes updates more difficult and your customers are gonna understand even less about OSTree than you or I do.
Use standard fedora versions with a custom repo to supply packages including a branding package. Then you can adhoc create images using a simple chroot and dnf skills sans grub and kernel… Customize as you see fit… Tar, squashfs, wimlib-imagex --unix-data whatever it up… THEN deploy it using a livecd chroot in install grub kernel and set efi and ship. Or do proper mediacreator and a kickstart and an rpm repo…
There are lots of options to take advantage of 99% of a Fedora, CentOS, Alma, Rocky or un-branded RHEL release by keeping it as simple as possible.
As for licensing, I am not Fedora, I am not a lawyer, and no one respects my rights when it comes to intellectual property or open source licensing. However, /I/ still respect it. So you can’t dist fedora with modifications and call it fedora. You CAN lightly remix fedora into a not-too-aweful-to-maintain remix for such things. With your own branding package. You can even say its a remix of fedora or based on fedora but you cannot say it IS fedora unless it comes from Fedora as-is.
I would be very wary about attempting to pre-load any GPL incompatible licensed software or proprietary software along side GPL linux code. That is just asking for trouble. However, getter apps to GET proprietary software where what is bundled is still Open Source and compatible is largely a fine workaround. if you can otherwise get said software by simple download from a public link.
Hope this helps at least lift your outlook on how many options you actually have even if the primary one seems overly burdensome and often is.
This is not an issue about the codec, You cannot redistribute the laptop with the Linux Mint name and branding without consent from Clem/Linux Mint people. Same for ZorinOS or any other Linux distro.
Because you do not own, or have consent to do so. The Logo, and Naming are trademarks. That is why Pop_OS, Tuxedo Computers exist, and other companies who redistribute Linux distros. They brand the OS for resell. Example: Lenovo has consent from Fedora to redistribute and sell Fedora branded Laptops. DELL also has consent to do the same with Ubuntu.
This is why you were directed to use uBlue to build yourself an OS so you can brand it. Then do what you need with codecs.
Sorry, I had assumed more open practices than were in place. This is the canonical Fedora policy I found summing it up. Distribution - Fedora Project Wiki
I really appreciate all the detailed instructions you’ve provided. With the context from @hamrheadcorvette along with your guidance, I will work on finding the best possible solution. Thank you once again to everyone involved. I hope to contribute something back to the community someday.
copyright and intellectual property laws apply.
You may legally charge a fee for providing an [u]unaltered copy[/] of a distro ISO on your choice of media as a service, but may not charge for the software. You must meet the standards specified in the licensing for that software that may allow you to transfer the software.
Those apply to the individual software pieces, but the overall distro is more restrictive and prevents use of a copyrighted or registered name without explicit approval. Thus logos, branding, etc. are very limited.
Installing it on a laptop fundamentally alters it so that is out unless you have written approval from the supplier. OEMs make those arrangements and have approval before they distribute hardware containing brand name software.
Most distros do not allow anyone do blanket distribution of their software since they would have no control of what alterations may be made before distribution. Since it would bear their name they would be seen as the source and could appear to distribute malware or software that is not up to their normal standards.
A few copies to friends is one thing. Distributing commercially is totally different.
Note that even though many mirrors are used worldwide to distribute fedora, ubuntu, debian, etc., that the software thus distributed is done by agreement between the mirror host and the distributor. The mirror hosts the unaltered image, and there are checks in place to verify that each package thus distributed has not been altered at the time it is downloaded.
I’ve sold many PC’s with whatever O/S I choose to install, the US codecs patent rules are meaningless as I live in Europe.
I also doubt Clem would care if used mint, would you like me to ask him on your behalf?
