Saw this on slashdot this morning, looks like Best Buy is selling some retail version of Hardy Heron. I was really curious as to how they were getting away with it so I did some looking around.

On Best Buy’s website they claim the software is distributed by a company called ValuSoft, which is actually a division of THQ. Whats particularly curious to me is that neither of these companies is affiliated with Canonical Ltd. the company that owns Ubuntu, or at least not that I can tell.

So I guess that means that ValuSoft must have licensed the Ubuntu name and the software for retail sales? Which doesn’t really make business sense to me. If I were Canonical I would have sold the stuff direct to Best Buy instead of licensing it out, but then again perhaps Canonical doesn’t have the capacity to distribute mass volumes of their software to the ol’ brick ‘n mortars. Nor the capacity to offer the support that probably comes with the $20 price tag of this box.

Anyone seen one of these boxes around in a Best Buy?