WHILE most of us think that the Devil invented trademark law, it seems that the folks at Ubuntu have decided to shut down old Nick for breaching their infernal trademark with some teeshirts.
A couple of Ubuntu fans have been running a cafepress store which sold t-shirts and stickers with the logo Ubuntu Satanic.
They didn't make any cash on it and the stuff was as cheap as chips. According to their website they have had to shut down Ubuntu Satanic after a nasty letter from the blokes at Canonical.
According to a statement on the site, Canonical is enforcing its intellectual property rights over the Ubuntu name. The store is now closed and you will no longer be able to buy any merchandise.
"This saddens us. We are big fans of Ubuntu and have a lot of respect for Canonical. However, they need to understand that a phenomenon such as Ubuntu is only as strong as its community and alienating that community over the sale of a couple of lousy t-shirts is not the way to go," the site moans.
There are a few comments under the announcement which indicate that some users feel that Canonical, with its image of free and easy software, should enforce such trademark things in the same way that Torvald Linus looks after the Linux trademark.
Most of the comments however are from people who have rushed to defend Canonical for defending its trademark.
Satan was not available for comment as we ran out of virgin's blood before he picked up the phone.