On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Lance Davis wrote:
That really sums up redhats attitude does it ??
None of the other projects / companies mentioned , including XFree86 ,
Apache etc, use trademarks to restrict the distribution of GPL software
like Redhat does.
Quoting GPL FAQ:
The GPL says that anyone who receives a copy of your version from
you has the right to redistribute copies (modified or not) of
that version. It does not give you permission to distribute the
work on any more restrictive basis.
So isn't Red Hat already violating that by their restrictions on
using their trademark and releasing software with the trademark
in it as GPL?
Who is to say that in the next release we may be told to rename all
of the
redhat- rpms as well as redhat-artwork and anaconda-images, because they
use redhats trademark - it is redhat inc that have chosen the rules and
changed the goalposts at each release of Redhat(TM) Linux(TM).
GPL should protect you perhaps.
And even though neither we nor our lawyers may agree with redhats
interpretation of trademark law we do not have deep enough pockets to
argue.
It is right that the questions are asked now, and hopefully anmswers
given. The use of redhat- for an rpm in theory contravenes redhats published tradmark
guidelines, and
permission is not given anywhere for its use.
Surely if redhat does allow this use then it may be weakening its
trademark position ....
And what about all of those people calling up redhat inc for support on
the redhat- rpms when they havent paid for it because they got it from a
back street cd vendor ??
What if I called my package redhat-config-widgit because it configures a
widgit to work with redhat/fedora/other rpm based distro ???
So - get yourself a life ... and ask your lawyers to give the answers.
Lance