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Lindows Allowed to Use Company Name in Holland
Supp0rtLinux writes "It appears that Lindows/Linspire has finally made some headway against Microsoft in the Netherlands. According this article, the Judge ruled that Linspire's continued, but minimal use of 'Lindows' for legal and trademark purposes doesn't violate Microsoft's trademark. With the US court date on this issue coming up soon, one can only wonder if Microsoft will have effectively cut off its nose to spite its face. And following immediately on the heels of today's Netherlands news, the latest Michael's Minutes from Linspire pegs all the blame for virus problems on Microsoft and basically says that Linux (well, Lindows anyway) is the cure."
But unfortunately, a wise man said about us:
'You think you're a superpower, and everyone else thinks your capital is copenhagen'.
There are some differences between USA and Europe that will give some varying and odd court decisions. Big business has a strong hold of the US courts. The only way they can lose is if anyone even stronger is the counterpart, or if a state or country invests heavily in the suit to gain even larger monetary gains from winning in the court. In Europe, this is rarely the case, but on the other hand many European legislators and courts are weak, have little resources and time. In Sweden, for example, the Social Democarat party tends to legislate and vote in the EU parlament often following the US court results and organisation bullying (MPAA, RIAA) Some countries invest time and resources to actually learn what the cases are about, and court cases involving Microsoft etc, can in fact be lost by the larger companies, liek in this case.
a jury [...] would be instructed to consider whether "windows" was a generic term before Microsoft introduced software with that name in 1985.
I can understand that such a thing is a different matter in non-English speaking countries, like The Netherlands.
How could they ever not say that it is a generic term in English speaking countries, like the USA?. I look in awe to the fact that such a thing has to be considerd.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What you have said isn't really true. One of the major strengths of Linux is the lack of a monoculture. Most distributions come with 3 or 4 web browsers, e-mail programs, and media players etc. It would take a very good hacker to find a generic security hole in every program.
The only other option would be to try and exploit a security hole in the Kernel. Given that not everybody runs the same Kernel this would also prove difficult.
Apparently, Lindows was guilty of this even more recently than Windows. From a July 21, 2002 Washington Post article:
However, for the record, I've seen passing references while googling that indicate this has been fixed. But the point still stands that if you're going to criticize Microsoft for doing this in the past, it's only fair to criticize Lindows for also doing this in the past.
Looks Like Lanother KDE Lin Lthe Lmaking
Really, this hoary old chestnut has been done-to-death. No. I don' think for one second that if Linux yada yada yada. For numerous reasons outlined already in this thread. Because Linux has a competent security model. Because Windows is homogenous - many/most users use identical apps (think Outlook Express, IE), on Linux there's too much choice for a worm, etc, to successfully propogate using one target. Because Linux doesn't default to running as root, and provides an easy mechanism for dropping-into root when you need to (disclaimer: maybe Windows has this - I've never found it, and I've been running Windows a lot longer than I've been running Linux).
Please, people, rather than using arguments like "I'll bet...", try just googling for facts. Or give up trolling.
This is where the serious fun begins.
The official name of the country is Nederland (The Netherlands) which is an appropriate name as a considerable area of the country actually lies below sea level, protected by dikes that keep the water out.
Holland is the name of two provinces in the West of the country, with port cities Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and the seat of the government The Hague. Historically, international trade was done mostly out of Holland, therefore this name is often used for the whole country throughout the world.
"Dutch" is the English word for the language of the Netherlands, it is related to the German word for "German" which is "Deutsch". The Dutch call themselves "Nederlanders".