New Red Hat Multimedia Oriented Distribution

ezadro writes "I just spotted this article at LinuxToday about Redhat being directly involved in a new distribution that will be known as ReHMuDi, which stands for Red Hat Multimedia Distribution." The goal seems to be a system for professional audio composers and engineers. Don't expect it for awhile- they have 24 months scheduled to do it, although it looks like releases will start by the end of 02.

Comments

Re:Step 1: Collect Underpants

[BurritoWarrior]

I suppose that they could sell boxed copies, but I don't know anyone who actually buys those (I just DL the ISOs).

I buy boxed sets about twice a year, from different linux companies -- SuSE, Red Hat or Mandrake. can I burn the ISOs? Yep, but I like to give back to the community and since I can't code, I buy their products to show my support.

Red Hat trademark

[XNormal]

Red Hat is not trying to make anyone's life more difficult. They are just doing what they are required to do by law if they want to keep their trademark.

Considering that their trademark is just about the only thing they own (they give away everything else under the GPL) I'd say they have the right and duty to defend it. You can distribute copies of their distribution - just don't call it Red Hat.

On a more philosophical note - I wouldn't mind living in a world without copyright or patent laws. Neither of them protects my rights to be free from violence or fraud. On the contrary - patents and copyrights are a deal with the government to use the force of the courts underwritten by police violence to go after people who are doing something that doesn't harm anyone.

But trademark is different - it serves an important role in protecting me from fraud. How can trust in a vendor be built without a means of identifying his products that has some protection from fraud? It doesn't seem practical to put this burden on me as a customer. This tradeoff between two freedoms is therefore justified.