CentOS - Aug 2005 - Linux Trademarked?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529

what's everyone's thoughts on this one?

-- 
My "Foundation" verse:
Isa 54:17  No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and 
every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt 
condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their 
righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.

-- carpe ductum -- "Grab the tape"
CDTT (Certified Duct Tape Technician)

Linux user #322099
Machines:
206822
256638
276825
http://counter.li.org/

Check out the analysis on GrokLaw....

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050816092029989

Falls under the category of 'necessary evil'....

I certainly haven't spent $250,000 of my own money supporting Linux in
any way.

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, William Warren wrote:
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
> 
> what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
> 
> 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE       jim at rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine

On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:55 -0400, William Warren wrote:
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
> 
> what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Trademarks must be enforced or they disappear.  If the trademark on
"Linux" were to disappear, Linus would not be able to stop anyone from
calling anything Linux.  For example, without the trademark Microsoft
could rename Vista to "MS Linux" and there wouldn't be a thing
anyone
could do.

Someone must enforce the trademark on Linux.  Linus has appointed the
Linux Mark Institute (LMI) as his trademark enforcement agent.  Linus
can change this later if he wants.

I trust Linus' intentions.  

As long as neither of these two point change, I will trust LMI.

Trademark lawsuits can be expensive.  As I understand it, LMI is
supposed to be a self-funding non-profit whose sole purpose is to
enforce the trademark.

-David

William Warren wrote:
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
> what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Linux was trademarked by someone almost 10 years ago.  That
person started asserting writes on book publishers and other
media outlets.  After about 18 months thanx to pro-bono
lawyers, Linus was able to wrestle control of the trademark. 
Since then, he has not enforced it.

I'm sure something has now triggered Linus into a legal
position where he must enforce it.  I'm sure he probably
wanted to do it for $1 (like what SSC did on the "Cool It
Works With Linux" hardware branding about 10 years ago), but
it's probably best that he has built a non-profit institution
to deal with the administrative nightmares that would quickly
bog-him-down.

The same thing happened to Red Hat(R).  The trademark issue
brought on by Sun -- shortly after Sun bought Cobalt.  Long,
long story there, but Red Hat ran into the real issue that it
had _never_ enforced its Red Hat (R) trademark, and there was
a viable case that Cobalt had destroyed the value of it as
anything but public domain.  Especially when Red Hat got into
it with Sun during negotiations, Red Hat had _no_ legal
ground to stand on when Sun continued to ship a completely
modified version with all trademarks.

[ Something SuSE didn't tolerate, hence why Sun had to
license from them when they moved to a SuSE Linux base. ;-]

Hence why Red Hat is _extremely_ "tight lipped" on _not_
showing any heritage from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Core on
their pages.  You have to get into the technical Fedora Core
pages.  The pundits used to use this just to be
argumentative, but the reality is the legal issues if Red Hat
ever did acknowledge things.

BTW, _now_ you'all know why Red Hat calls it "Fedora Core"
and _not_ "Fedora Linux" or anything with "Linux."  Red Hat
was smart, they knew this was coming, and they have planned
for it.  It is the eventuality of the trademark game. 
Because no matter how good your intentions are, legal
non-sense always kills it, so it's best to setup your
community projects with this foresight beforehand.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)

please notice that at this url

http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=13

that there might actually be some misrepresentation of others based upon
what i have read in this thread.... or the other... i deleted all my
messages and had to cut and past the subject from the online archive...
sorry.

ummmmm it is Fedora Core and not Fedora Linux right?

or am i missing something?

im trying to understand..... does Red Hat have a license to say
"Linux" and
CentOS does not so that Red Hat can say Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat
Linux X.x and CentOS is just a distribution that has linux in it or???

i know i am somewhat confused. anyone?

 - rh

--
Robert Hanson
Abba Communications
http://www.abbacomm.net

William Warren wrote:
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
> 
> what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
If you bother to read the LMI site, this is very simple.
http://www.linuxmark.org/who_needs.html

If you want to register _your own_ trademark which _includes_ the linux 
mark, then you need a Sublicense.  Otherwise, you _should_ call it 
Linux(R) at the first prominent appearance.

Depending on where you are, your fair use rights may well mean that you 
don't have to do a thing.  Unless you are selling stuff, you don't need 
to worry.  Unless you want to take out a trade mark of your own, it 
won't cost you any money.  If you do want your own trademark, then you 
will be paying shit loads of money anyway so this extra sublicense 
should not be a major hurdle.

I will not be altering any of my linux stuff based on this.

John.
> 

-- 
John Newbigin
Computer Systems Officer
Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/staff/jnewbigin