Linux Trademark Fun Continues 337
Orre noted an article running on internetnews about LMI's efforts to
license the Linux trademark to companies that use it. Prices range from $200 to $5k for companies with over a million bucks in revenue.
Why charge for it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
If I am in Swaziland and I start selling my own version of Linux, who is going to stop me? I suppose the community won't recognize it as an official "Linux" distribution?
Red Hat doesn't have a license (Score:4, Interesting)
Linus disses /. (Score:4, Interesting)
" the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."
- Linus Torvalds, 20 Aug 2005
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95 [lkml.org]
I call BS! (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me wonder though why Novell pays, being that they are "Novell Inc.".
What about the product: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux"?
Interestingly, I notice that the Red Hat web site doesn't use "Linux" on the front page except in direct reference to RHEL.
What kind of revenue (Score:3, Interesting)
Net or gross?
Re:Why charge for it? (Score:2, Interesting)
If Linus is the trademark holder, then like he says, we're relying on his personal judgement to "protect Linux" rather than using it as some kind of "legalistic enforcement tool". I know he's a good guy, but if we just trusted everyone to be good guys, we wouldn't need stuff like the GNU license.
What happens if he changes his mind? What happens if he gets sucked into a weirdo-cult? What happens if he dies and his heir is a greedy scumbag?
If we're really serious about making Linux a decentralized movement, open to reinterpretation by anyone, we need to remove points of control like this one and put them in the hands of trusted organizations or legal agreements.
Re:Why charge for it? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not quite as simple. From Linus' mail:
Or, if the name ends up showing up in a trademark search that LMI needs to do every once in a while just to protect the trademark (another legal requirement for trademarks), LMI itself might have to send you a cease-and-desist-or-sublicense it letter.
Which means, that you are practically guaranteed to get a C&D letter from LMI sooner or later, even if you chose a name which isn't likely to be used by anyone else. Which in turn means that you are effectively forced to license the name.
BTW, I don't see how this legal requirement to enforce the trademark should suddenly disappear if it's in combination with another trademark. "Microsoft Linux" would still infringe on the trademark rights even though "Microsoft" is a trademarked name in itself. Therefore "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" should be an infringment either, despite "Red Hat" being a trademark in itself, and therefore the legal requirement of enforcement should hold there either.
IANAL, however.