Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, posts announcements on releases, UEFI Secure Boot, retail availability and trademark disputes.
HN links it for official statements on Secure Boot and the fixubuntu.com trademark issue, and commenters use it as a primary source on Ubuntu history.
Regardless of what the people involved say or write publicly, this conflict and others like it are really about power.
With several dozen million Ubuntu desktop users worldwide[1], Canonical has become the gravitational center of the FLOSS desktop and a promising platform for other form factors. No other FLOSS desktop comes even remotely close in terms of mass adoption.
As a consequence, many other FLOSS projects that historically have perceived themselves as more important "upstream projects" to the Ubuntu desktop have now become, effectively, contributing projects to Ubuntu. It is now they who depend on Canonical to reach and interact with the vast majority of FLOSS desktop users.
For the individuals who identify themselves with those other projects, this tectonic shift in power has not been enjoyable. More and more of them are gradually realizing that if they want to continue working with Canonical, it will have to be on Canonical's terms.
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[1] There were over 25 million Ubuntu users at last count: http://blog.canonical.com/2013/10/01/ubuntu-pre-installed-and-in-retail-worldwide/
1. In May of 2012 they announced 2011 numbers. So, it's about 3 days in to 2013... might want to give them a little more time.
2. In 2011, they sold 8-10 million, and in May said they were on track to reach 20 million in 2012.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-all-pcs-sold-next-year
3. In October of 2011, Dell started featuring Ubuntu in over 200 retail stores in China.
http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in-china/
So it's entirely possible they could meet the 20m number.
"Secure Boot is designed to address the potential for malware to insert itself between the firmware and the operating system on your computer. It accomplishes this by enforcing that only “approved” software is able to boot in your computer by way of a key that recognises pre-approved and signed software."
That's from the linked canonical article on the issue: http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/28/white-paper-secure-boot-impact-on-linux/
I don't see an Ubuntu/Canonical trademark on this website.
Certainly if: "http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/" doesn't get shut down, "fixubuntu.com" should be ok.
Edit: from: http://blog.canonical.com/2013/11/08/trademarks-community-and-criticism/ "The site owner has already agreed to remove the Ubuntu logo and clarified that there is no connection; from our perspective the situation has been resolved, "
Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions."
http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in-ubuntu-13-04/
Not a Linux wizard but as a long time user, I remembered this 2012 news from Canonical: http://blog.canonical.com/2012/06/22/an-update-on-ubuntu-and-secure-boot/
Perhaps the author meant there was no 'universal' Linux implementation, however it's been available for a while in certain distros.