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Red Hat & Centos On Name Usage
Mister Incognito writes "As you probably know, Centos is a free distribution compiled from sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As requested, the distro has any references to Red Hat removed. But now Red Hat has decided that Centos must not even mention their name on the web site, or link to Red Hat, or even use metatags with its name on it. " Well, actually, what RHAT has asked for is that Centos comply with the their terms for using the name; Matthew Szulik has talked about this before, and should be noted that not all of the copyright stuff is "bad."
I'm not a manager who's arse needs kissing - why on Earth would I know about a minor distribution such as Centos?
All occurances of "Red Hat" will be replaced with "Rat Hed".
Why is this news?
I guess from my point of view it is PERFECTLY sane request. I guess Red Hat is here for money, and I wish them well.
So...it is no much "stuff that matters".
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
From the support perspective, it makes sense. A person using CentOS might call Red Hat for support if they see Red Hat CentOS. A lot of people will say that Mandrake started as a fork of Red Hat, but you do not see Red Hat on the Mandrake page.
I wounder if this also applies to whitebox linux?
Surely even the most casual reader of slashdot knows the difference between copyrights, trademarks and patents by now.
Who cares about the "meta tags" (actually meta elements) anyway? Search engines ignore them.
Does the same restrictions apply to white box linux too?
No Sig for you.!
Everyone just make sure to state that
RED HAT doesn't want CENTOS to link to them or mention their name because they are offering the same product as a free alternative.
This way google can index this so when people search they will find what they are looking for.
Now please copy and paste this post into every message board you frequent.
Thank you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My copy of Mandrake still says Redhat when booting. They are an offshoot of Redhat, but haven't really been Redhat for a long time. Why is Redhat only targetting Centros?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Eerily similar to Orbitz story covered today we see the following in their email message:
So people can't link to Red Hat?
Whitebox linux seems to be doing the same thing. Will Red Hat chase down all of these RHEL forks? Doesn't this sort of go against the Linux "way?"
I wouldn't want a crappy OS doing stuff in my name either. Centos is responsible for compiling new packages for patches. Red Hat has no control over this. To the non-technical suits, they could easily combine the 2 in their heads. Granted, that would probably be the only thing they could combine....
Thanks!
its like in 'american splendor'. "these guys arent real nerds! theyre gonna get good degrees and good paying jobs with a lot of corporate sponsors!"
Good luck enforcing this or convincing a judge about this.
Not.Its actully pretty funny I think. When your product is as overpriced as Red Hat's you have to do everything you can to push out alternatives or the market will replace you.
Red Hat's value proposition isn't the quality of their support or they wouldn't care. Their value is the # of ISV's who write to their exact distribution. So the trick is simply to make sure no one else can nudge you with a hint that theirs is identical to RHs.
I really like the "Red Hed" from now on suggestion!
This all seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Red Hat's business model for its Enterprise Linux is not selling the software as-is: this simply does not make (very much) financial sense, as the software is mostly given away for free by the creators. This is why Red Hat made the decision to split their product line in two and give away Fedora for free.
The business model for RHEL is selling support: if anything goes wrong with the product you can simply call in Red Hat and get them to fix it, without potentially wasting time or money on employing your own linux admin staff. So I don't see why Red Hat is so bothered about this when CentOS doesn't provide the support they do, and when they'd already removed most of the Red Hat references from their web site.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
any company related to linux protecting IP = good
any other company protecting IP = evil
"Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission."
I enjoy the effort that Red Hat's lawyers seem to be applying to this, but I think that the statement above may have simply been a stock, typical IT notion used by lawyers and not something that Red Hat either believes or enforces. I could be wrong, though....
I'm sure that the folks over at White Box Enterprise Linux really appreciate you pointing the RedHat lawyers their way.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.
That sounds so ridiculous now....
Notice where the lawyer points out that Red Hat does not permit unauthorized linking to their website? Since when does using the Red Hat name along with a link to the Red Hat corporate website cause confusion about who you are? Eliminating every possibility of confusion and building brand identity is fine, but this is just stupid.
Come on, Red Hat. Just because you fancy yourselves competing with Sun, Microsoft and IBM doesn't mean you have to behave more obnoxiously than they do.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
We migrated from RH to Debian and never looked back.
"Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission."
That's fancy lawyer talk, right? It can't mean what I (and possibly other normal people) mean, can it?
Perhaps X.org and some other developers will wish to enforce conpyrights and trademarks specifically towards Red Hat.
The effect I propose would be this: force Red Hat to remove any mention of what software is included on the box and on its website. Further, when installing the software and running it, RH cannot mention what software is running, nor can it claim title to the work. It would make them lose a large amount of recognizable software and therefore lead to sales losses.
If RH is simply customizing their OS, its making a quick and easy buck off thousands of other pieces of software they didn't have to code.
Or Whitebox for that matter. If you have the need for "enterprise" class utility, then why would you not pay for it from the source and get the support.
To me "enterprise" is a large organization with lots of users needing lots of services somewhere close to 24/7. This means some amount of money is on the line, and thus should be done professionaly.
Now if they tried to make an "enterprise" Fedora that would be an interesting project. But just recompiling RHEL sources into a "new" distro seems to cheapen "enterprise".
( - Bush, SNL)
It is perfectly acceptable to even change the main trading name of Centos to "RedHat-based Centos" as this is descriptive; they would not be claiming when selling the product that it is RedHat, but just Redhat-based.
In summary, if RHAT are claiming a trademark violation for this stuff, they can take a hike.
IANALOEAUSC.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Are they trying to enforce trademarks which are displayed when you use the software? I'm not a GPL fanatic but I think they ought to lose the right to enforce those trademarks if they're included in a GPLed srpm.
Enforcing the trademarks on bits of the CentOS website or documentation is obviously another matter.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
The BSD license that offers the greatest freedom IMHO, even states this (from BSD Template):
"Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."
Uh, where has any law or court opinion even suggested that one needs permission to link to a web site?
No copyright or trademark law lets Red Hat restrict me from making factual statements like, "Red Hat's web site is www.redhat.com", any more that they can prevent me from stating "Red Hat's phone number is 1-888-REDHAT1" or "Red Hat's address is 1801 Varsity Drive, Raleigh, NC 27606."
Including certain browser-parsable elements in that declaration: "Red Hat's web site is www.redhat.com" doesn't change that.
RHAT: please put down the TM crackpipe.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Does it really matter? You are clearly already being held prisoner by your own ignorance.
Anyone care to share their experiences with these RH clones? How accurate a clone is it?
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
Ironic that Red Hat seems to miffed about people using their name. They're not so bothered that they stole The Fedora Project's name when they changed the name of their 'home' distro. Red Hat proceeded to apply for a trademark on the name which would preclude the name being used by the Feodra Project which predates their trademark application by a number of years.
Read the Fedora Project's statement here.
whitebox has quit. They have a plan to migrate
users to Cent OS and the main developer of whitebox is now working on Cent OS.
Not too long ago MS "asked" everyone to remove the word "Windows" from all the product names. Like "Windows Commander" becoming "Total Commander" and similar. Great minds think alike, eh? Is it the natural way of things that when you become very rich and famous you are obliged to become an asshole?
Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission.
Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat Red Hat
Fuck you, you damn pieces of shit.
You people are just horrible human beings.
Dogs scrapping over a piece of meat is what it looks like. RH and the 'first tier' Linux vendors want to differentiate themselves from fat goofy weird trekkie Linux (fgwtL) vendors which want to differentiate themselves from 'fake/newbie' Linux vendors like Linspire and so on. In the meantime SCO wants to litigate with everyone and maybe just maybe RH has either swung or thinks it can swing a deal with SCO which would require them to divorce themselves from fgwtL and all the others, except EyeBeeEm.
It's really start to look ridiculously fragmented out there in Penguin/Devil land isn't it? The last time I checked there were 250 listings on Distrowatch. Isn't it time for some massive consolidation or least an acknowledgement that there are commerically viable distros, academically viable distros, home/desktop/soho distros and everything else distros? At least let the propective customer or user peruse the selections based on that simple taxonomy. Otherwise this insanely complex Cambrian Epoch ecology chockfull of geeks and freaks most of whom are destined for evolutionary dead ends is just sucking up valuable time and resources.
RHEL is a selling point -- and was for me when I checked out a new web host company. Yet, the ISP who promoted RHEL on the front page installed CentOS . While the bits are the same, I did feel a bit miffed. I'll still use the ISP (they've done a good job otherwise) though it would have made a difference if I were shopping for them before.
I tell my clients that the operating system is a "conservative server focused version of Linux" as opposed to RHEL. The name implies support by Red Hat...and neither White Box nor CentOS are supported by Red Hat.
What about RedHat linking to Linux? Apache? and the whole bunch of other opensource apps. I see, they can do it, but we can not? Do we call it an equal treatment? i think not... RedHat is now on my 'talk-badly-about-it-on-any-meeting' list. Och, and please dont give me the shit 'they have right to earn money' etc. Information wants to be free, and either RedHat gets its money on support etc, or it should bite the dust. RedHat grew using opensource to the deep. prohibiting the opposite is just unfair.
Show of hands. How Many people knew about CentOS before this story? How many do now? If this gets picked up by other news outlets, CentOS will probably get rather well known.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
Scientific Linux, another RHEL clone, refers to the other "it":
"...basically Enterprise Linux, recompiled from source..."
So people can't link to Red Hat?
Gee, I sure hope not.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
RedHat, RedHat and RedHat. Earlier RedHat RedHat RedHat, this was in reply to RedHat RedHat RedHat!!
.....
BWAHAAAA
OK, try this
RedHat
RedHat
RedHat
BWA HA HA HAAA YOU CANT STOP ME... RedHat RedHat RedHat RedHat
RedHat says on their site that you can make a distro out of their source code (GPL, its on their site) as long as you remove all occurrences of RedHat (their trademark) from it.
This isn't a matter of IP, its simply trademark (this would be like if Linspire had advertised itself as being Windows)
/me raises hand
Although those looking for a FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX should also consider Scientific Linux, Taolinux, and Whitebox Linux.
That is all.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
How is it that a company could be trying to "enforce" trademark recognition but obviously has released the trademark into public domain through its own contributions?
centOS or Whitebox for that matter are not doing anything but using srpms as released by RedHat to build a binary distribution based off of redhat linux.
If RedHat had wanted to keep its trademark viable it sould have named the product differently. RedHat should have been the company name and RedHat "fedora" or "red cap" or some other name should have been the label of its linux project so packages such as RPM (Redhat package manager) could be implemented without potential to violate trademark.
So i guess the only resolution is for the community to drop redhat all together and to remove RPM, come up with your own version that has no mention of redhat (cpm) and migrate to an ebuild or apt-get method of managing the system...
i guess in a way RedHat is using this to try and beat around the bush and make it only possible for personal builds of there gpl'd systems and not a community or commercial effort.
good way to "protect" there profits.
Deep linking is perfectly legal.
Looks like Red Hat's plans are going straight down the toilet.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Do they really want to make everybody type http://www.redhat.com in the browser address bar? That is too much work for most people.
Get a free ipod.
If they allow someone to use the RedHat trademark, NOT if they allow someone to mention that they exist.
How about if Centros said "If you want to buy a commercially supported distribution, please contact [REDACTED]". Or "Thanks to [REDACTED] for allowing us to use code they have donated to OSS"?
What RedHat cannot allow is CentrOS to say "A free RedHat(tm) distribution".
I'm "make code not war" and all that jazz, but I'm surprised you didn't put a Google bomb in there too.
i dont speek that langauge!!!11
u that jesus dude??? wehn did u cum back here???? i taught you wehre dead or somthing lol. vein vein vein vein vein. lollerskatesz.
"It's taken us a long time to become the leader in Linux for the Enterprise. Since adopting Microsoft's business model, we've become profitable. Hey, the model works! Once you've adopted the model, you sort of become infused (read "infected") with the idea that this way of doing business is feeding your company. Any threat to cut off that feeding cycle has to be dealt with as a threat. That's all we're saying here. And if you piss off the community in the process, then so be it. This is a business. Bill Gates has taught us the way. We can be profitable and be despised. We did it when we shit-canned our desktop line. We even left many customers on the limb on that one. But in the long hall we sent a powerful message to Linux end users and that is, "Unless you can come to us in large enough numbers to sign a significant contract, we don't need you." We're an enterprise company, period. Beyond that, we prepared to follow this model until we see it no longer works. So far, it works beautifully."
In other words, we'll follow the letter of the GPL but screw the spirit.
the centos torrent is fast.. i'm downloading it now at 566 kb/sec!
Ultimately they are extremely accurate as "clones" because there is essentially very little change between the RHEL releases and the clones. RedHat are legally required to release the source code to everything they release under the GPL (which is virtually everything). The clone distros then take the source RPMs from the RH servers, strip out all the trademarked text and graphics, and compile it for use with other distributions.
I personally have been using CentOS on around a dozen servers for 6 months or so now, serving mail, DNS and various other services to thousands of people, and have never had any issue whatsoever with it. With the exception of the logos and name, it is identical to working with RHEL, so it is no problem to work with. All updates can be done quickly and easily, either through up2date or yum, and it is rock solid.
Fuck you.
I am a paying Red Hat customer. I am also a CentOS user (at home) and have contributed to the CentOS project. You are now pissing on your own customers.
I am going to do everything in my power to get CentOS validated now as a computing platform for my employer, one of the top 5 largest pharma companies in the world, and work to migrade all new Linux servers to CentOS.
You screw me, I screw you back.
Perhaps he should have a word with them and withdraw their permission to use his Linux trademark if they want to play games like that.
While it is moderately interesting reading the various interpretations of trademark law when used in software, I was just wondering if ANYONE had RTFA?
The article states that the ONLY media involved is the web site. They don't want RH related images and schpiel all over the site, and they don't want metatags there to prevent automated search engines picking up CentOS as valid hits for searches for 'Red Hat'.
It's nothing to do with mentioning the copyright holder in code. It's nothing to do with 'never saying the word again', it's just a case of disassociating the CentOS web presence with the Red Hat one.
As you might imagine, our single-CPU web server is taking quite a beating at the moment. We took the site down briefly to tune some things, and it's back up for the moment, but we're working with several potential resources to post static copies of the linked pages in case the situation worsens again.
Please bear with us.
Michael Jennings
Technical Lead, cAos Linux
The cAos Foundation (http://www.caosity.org/)
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
Is this a bug in /. parser?
/. listed this:
Parent posted link:
http://linux.slashdot.org/redhat.com
But
RedHat[redhat.com]
instead of:
RedHat[linux.slashdot.org]
or maybe:
RedHat[slashdot.org]
No sig today.
Hopefully, a good list of other sites linking to RedHat will be compiled and sent to their lawyers to show how stupid this is. I use Centos and love it. There are some good guys working on this project. I use it because a) it works, b) it updates very well, and c) I don't have to pay RH. See, I used to pay RHat. Then one day they came along and said, "Screw you, End User Boy!" This latest development is very bad, in my opinion. It really shows how unethical RedHat has become. I understand why people say they are the M$ of the Linux community. I used to, even after I stopped using RH, say, "They're not that bad!" I was wrong and apparently, they like their new found position. After all, it's business.
Still, such tactics are irritating, to say the least.
The postman hits! The postman hits! You have mail.
Would that not be considered fair use of their trademark?
As long as its stated clearly and centos is not trying to confuse the 'buyer' with the name, then it should be fair game.
I guess that means that RedHat ( or will that now be "R*dH*t" ? ) will be going after the other projects that clearly state that what they are doing is BASED off redhat products.
What about using the RH name in reviews? Like oracle tried to restrict a while ago.
Sounds like they are just being a prick to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A few years back Linuxiso.org got one these letters from Red Hat. They provide links to the sites so that you can download ISOs, get support, etc. RH requested that they stop all together. They did finally agree to a link without any logos. So all the other distro buttons on the site have the logo of the product Rat Hat does not. Totally stupid give away of free advertising on there part.
The issue against CentOS I can kind of understand. What if CentOS changes something and badly breaks something. If CentOS sucks then Red Hat must suck too. I can understand them wanting to protect themselves from that. Also Trademark law tries to protect companies from riding the coat tails of another company. CentOS's only reason to exist is to make a whitewashed, logo neutered version, of Red Hat. Thus the more successful RH is at promotion the more successful CentOS is and they don't have to spend any money.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
What is CentOS good for? For testing and development. It will give you a RHEL-like environment to develop on with the same library versions and kernel parameters.
Let's say you want to deploy an application for RHEL and you want to demonstrate it to your boss without running up a huge bill, then CentOS would probably work. You could set up the development environment, do your tests, and demo for the boss. When you want to actually deploy for production and you need the real supported and certifed OS, then you can plop down the money for RHEL and seamlessly move your application over.
...to "Prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor".
the white box site is http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ run by John Morris
someone else wanted to be a co-developer and registered http://www.whiteboxlinux.net/ on their own initiative.
That second person who invited themselves to the party was rebuffed by Morris, who did not want to share control, and has moved to CentOS He was NOT the "main developer".
The original (one-person-run) whiteboxlinux show continues unchanged.
Red Hat can't stop Centos from stating which distro they're derived from. It's effectively required by the GPL, so the source inheritance can be traced. They can stop it in the subjective "advertising use", but documenting the fact is protected.
--
make install -not war
Sounds like it is time for everyone who has software in the major Linux distributions to trademark their projects. The results could be interesting if people start holding Redhat to the same standard Redhat are holding CentOS to.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
>How accurate a clone is it?
/, but I've used CentOS since "RH AS 2.1" clone times. It is very good.
I haven't tried to do an actual diff on
Here are some reasons:
1) Free
2) Free updates - no fscking around with non-functioning up2date (as opposed to a "pirated" RH EL version). I'm not sure about the delta, but you need quite immediate updates, get Lineox's version which releases updated RPMs as soon as they appear on Red Hat Network.
3) yum - integrated for automated updates and installs
4) Works with 3rd party software that requires RedHat Enterprise Linux - of course noone can guarantee this 100% but I've tried several packages and they worked just fine...
5) Up-to-date ISO relases - for example the current CentOS release is 3.4 which is similar (well, maybe you could say the same) to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 4 (hence 3.4). So you don't have to fsck around and download all the updates as you would have to if you started with the original RH EL 3.0 ISOs.
6) As the marketing folks say, it's a great "upgrade path" to RH EL 3.0 users who got stuck with expired support contracts and don't want to shell out $1,500 for another year of RH updates. "Migrating" from RH EL 3.0 to an up-to-date CentOS 3.x takes couple of minutes (upgrade redhat-release to centos-release, install yum and yum cache RPMs, run yum update)
CentOS is the leading free RHEL 3.0 clone distro so try it if you want a free clone, or Lineox if you want a cheap clone with quick updates.
...or something like this. i was fed up with Fedora the other day and decided, hey wtf, let's have a few weeks of playing with new distros to learn and broaden further than gentoo, fedora, and my old Red Hat (before the split). i wanted to find something that had the "enterprise" badge/behavior to start getting a feel for them as opposed to the desktop style. Long story short, i said screw it and just let fedora there, turned off the monitor and pretend it's a server for now. Buuuuuut, now CentOS will get a shot - i'd never heard of it, but really want to give it a shot now. It's nice to be able to try something like this w/o getting into buying anything yet; i plan to learn enough to get something off the ground, then when the time is right, pay the $$$ for the support i'll need to keep customers happy (and machines running w/o using all my time). Thanks CentOS!
... just would like to test it first :) (i've never liked the smell of 'trial' software at all ... just. icky).
Hell, RH should thank them too, if i like it and it works well, you're damn straight i'll pay up for some RHEL
I know the knee-jerk reaction is to start posting links to their site, but in this case the best strategy for punishing such a stupid "rule" would be to go along with it. Never link to their site. Find any site that links to it, show them the relevant part of the letter, and encourage them to remove their links as well. Slowly stip the web of as many links to Ret Hat as possible.
I'm sure as they watched their pagerank fall, they would be comforted to know that they were finally getting what they asked for.
I would like to clarify the position of the cAos Foundation, of which CentOS is a project, on the web site matter.
First, I'll refer to the following summary (taken from this post):
First let me say that I appreciate your feedback and your candor.
Your comments are well received.
However, the situation as it currently stands is that we do not have
legal counsel to advise us on what we can or cannot say on our web
site, nor do we have the financial resources to pay for such.
Furthermore, RedHat is required by law to protect their trademarks or
risk losing them, and they do have valid concerns about trademark
dilution.
RedHat has always been very generous with their code and open with
their processes and resources. I would point out that their primary
competition in the commercial RPM-based distribution space is not
nearly as generous or cooperative. While we may not agree with
everything they have said, we have an obligation to respect their
trademarks and their role in helping to create what we are and what
CentOS is.
The bottom line is this: The references to Red Hat and any other
marks they own MUST be removed from the web site and will remain so
indefinitely. We want to be clear about what CentOS is and what it
offers, but until we can secure legal counsel to help us balance our
interests with those of RedHat and other companies in this space, we
must err on the side of caution. That means if we're not sure we can
say it, we don't say it.
This course of action, while perhaps not the ideal solution from a
purely Libertarian point of view, is correct and in the best interests
of the project and the community at this time. We gain nothing by
hurting, diluting, or pissing off RedHat, nor would we want to. And
we certainly gain nothing turning this into a big legal fiasco.
Please understand that this is right and necessary at this point in
time, and support Donavan and the rest of the CentOS team in following
through on what we've asked of them.
Second, I want to reiterate that the RH legal team has been extremely patient and helpful. They pointed out a number of legitimate concerns, and we continue to work with them to make sure our web site is in compliance with their trademark usage policies.
Third, as we (and our projects) continue to grow and develop, we will be in need of legal counsel. If you are willing to provide pro bono legal advice to the Foundation and its member projects, please contact us (legal ~a~t~ caosity ~d~o~t~ org).
And finally, I would like to point out that projects like CentOS could not exist without the continued support of RedHat, and we thank them for their continued efforts to find the right balance between running a for-profit business and helping the non-profit community.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
The cAos Foundation
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
It's about time the FSF (or someone) stand up and take a stand on companies using trademark laws to get around the GPL.
I think Red Hat would have a much better time protecting their TM if they just change their name to Red Hatcrosoft... I know I wouldn't want to touch it.
So there's business precedent for this.
It's well-established that you can mention the trademarks of others in comparative advertising.
Centos can probably win this.
If I were RedHat, I would want my 800 number in as many places with CentOS as possible.
Granted, a very small percentage of the people that call will be willing to take the 'upsell' to RHEL, but some will.
Plus, anybody they can squeeze an address out of gets some glossy sales material sent their way. May not make them buy today, but it sure plants the idea in their head.
...of those people who posted comments here have actually READ the letter from RedHat? Not many, evidently! RedHat simply and fairly wants removal of its RedHat trademarks (namely, the name RedHat, RHEL, and the RedHat graphics) from the CentOS website. The request to remove all links to RedHat might be questionable, but perhaps that was a boilerplate statement and further clarification should be sought on that particular point.
Please people, READ THE ARTICLE and wait until the caffeine wears off before you post.
If the ISP claimed to run RHEL but really run CentOS, then they are fraudulently representing to you that they have Red Hat support available to quickly fix any problems, and they don't.
This issue of centOS and RHEL confusion is real.
Twice now I've picked up hosting plans for myself or others that claim they come with RHEL (aka, a subscription to redhat's network of up2date servers, and redhat software).
In these two cases when I actually run up2date I've noticed they are picking up packages from centOS. My complaint is simply that I want to be the one to deceide between centOS and RHEL, and am capable of evaluatiing their similarities and differences.
Redhat gives away in open source form a really solid product. The one thing they ask is that folks not connect their derivative products back to them. Given their generally clean playing in the open source world, I don't begrudge them this that much actually.
just had to jump in here - I thank redhat for everything they have done and given to open source community. But when they got rid of their retail product for 29.00 or 39.00 bucks it made me sad. Also why can't I go to book store anymore and buy suse - is there something going on legal wise with sco and the lawsuit. like something behind the seens that can't be talked about. I don't know - but when daryl and company talked about going to the bookstore and buy a os they quit showing up at the book store and that was right around the time redhat changed their business model. maybe I am just paranoid but who knows. as far as me and my clients I switched to debian - and now I have been testing ubuntu and I highly recommend that along with knoppix/mepis distros. I am favoring ubuntu because I have not ran across a piece of hardware that it has not detected yet. Which is great - so I think I am leaning towards ubuntu/debian. I like their philosophy of one version - no professional version etc - is their installer pretty? no - but I only have to do it once. that is my one pet peeve with redhat is that when will they have an in place upgrade available like sun's live upgrade or debian's apt-get. One they support and not just on their fedora product. anyway I am done rambling - I think I will stick with debian/ubuntu - I can put it on my sun blade. my daughter's imac, my amd64, and my intel 32 blades, and my laptop. they are all just apt-getting it.
Sorry to bother you with this note about etiquette in posts, but when you mention products and companies that people might be interested in, such as Red Hat or CentOS, please provide links. Thank you.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The cited court base was based on copyright law: Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act," Hupp said in his ruling.. Red Hat's lawyers are complaining about trademark misuse. That is very different. Creating a link is legal, but it would have to be done in a way that doesn't violate Red Hat's trademark.
How about "thread."
God damn. Overzealous enforcement of trademark rights is one thing, but that's something else entirely! Nobody (should) have the right to control who links to their site on the Internet! If you don't want a page linked to, then don't put it up, or at least block outside referrers. It's not like the page being linked to is facilitating copyright infringement - there really is no legal reason why they can't link to anyone they damn well please, and nothing short of an act of Congress can change that.
To order centos to remove ALL trademarked references from the website steps on fair use rights of centos.
As long as they use them in proper context, and the customers are not mislead, then Red Hat is all wet.
Though, that said, they have more funds to sue centos into the ground, and win by proxy.
Expect them to remove the permission to re-use red hat code.. as much as they can get away with, considering the viral GPL looming over their heads.
Bet Red Hat wishes they had stuck with BSD code instead of getting into the Linux boat..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've done exactly this. I work for a large company which was preparing to roll out RHEL for an initiative. One department had access to some licenses for RHEL, but would not share.
I needed to develop a process for deployment of patches - including workflow and approvals, etc. My department did not have the budget to buy the licenses I needed to move forward.
As the go-live date approached, I used WBEL to develop and test the process. After we went live, I found that WBEL was binary compatible, down to the bugs with RHEL. It was great.
I was so pleased with this that I switched my test boxes over to WBEL so that I could have a test box with a longer lifecycle on the OS than the Fedora lifecycle.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
CentOS is not just "like" RedHat - it literally *IS* RedHat Linux! Same sources, same compile tree.
/ONLY/ thing different is the manufacturing date! (compile time)
The
Can you imagine the SHITFIT that Coca-Cola would have if there was a competing product called "Co-sola - Coca-Cola derived soda"??? I mean, artificial diamond production would quintuple overnight, and the Men's Wearhouse would have a run on all the suits needed to cover all the lawyers' bodies involved...
RedHat is being very, very good about this. And it's a good thing, too - RedHat would lose all future business from me (and very nearly did with their RHL -> Fedora switcharoo) if they did anything to actually stop CentOS or WhiteBox.
But, the name is theirs, and they have every right and responsibiltiy to protect it as legally required.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I don't get it. What do you mean there are no more Free versions of RedHat. What's this?r prise/4 /en/os/i386/SRPMSa /linux /core/3/i386/iso/
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/ente
or this
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedor
The Ent version may not be compiled for you but its there, its Free, and as its widely known several people compile and support it all for Free.
I know what you mean there are no ISO's of RedHat's Enterprise version sitting on their website, but the source is there and so is Fedora which is RedHat's "Free" distro. By any definition RedHat still puts a Free distro.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Call their support and ask them if Linux can do Web serving, or file serving, or if Linux can run MySQL.
The answer will be that no, Linux is not capable of such things. Among Linuxes, only Red Hat Enterprise Linux (not even Red Hat Desktop) can be used in a server capacity. The others do not "support" such operations and duties.
The marketing department has taken over at Red Hat.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I never heard of centos but it sounds good and I think I will try it out now that I know about them Thanks.
Actually, every time you mention Red Hat, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or any other variation of Red Hat you can find, you should just link to the free version of Red Hat.
;-P
Oh, and speaking of Red Hat, I really do like Red Hat products and have to admit that Red Hat 5.2 was my first introduction to linux.
What does everyone else think we should do about the Red Hat trademark problem?
Addendum requested:
put the what in the where?
It's good if it serves "our" side and bad if used by "them"? Is that what you meant?
HP Linux!
W hose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned.
Derived from sources freely provided by Prominent-North-American-Enterprise-Linux-Vendor-
Guaranteed to be 100% binary compatible with You-Know-Who.
Look for the lightning bolt logo!
Then they should speak quite harshly to whoever wrote that letter. Quite harshly.
CentOS is dependant on Red Hat to be able to exist, and for Red Hat to have such a letter created is... vile. Unless I hear shortly that they have taken reasonable corrective actions, I will think much less kindly of them (Red Hat), despite the amount of good technical work they have done, and their past support of Free Software. I *do* realize that trademarks MUST be defended, but here they are going far beyond that, and I cannot think kindly of anyone who would intentionally act in such a manner except in dire necessity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They should probably add that the vendor is named after a head covering that reflects light around 700 nm.
Just move to calling it Dead Rat - anyone who's ever tried to get support from them will immediately know what you mean :)
And no, I'm not bitter because I wasted my saturday because they shipped a dodgy certificate for the Satellite server. No sir, not me.
Sometimes it is referred to as RedHat, without a space between the Red & Hat.
Wow. Reading these comments makes me hurt. This is a very bad example of the Linux community. Some people need to learn that Red Hat is not the enemy. They are not trying to stop CentOS from distributing at all for goodness sake! All they want to do is protect their name. Is that all that bad? They aren't trying to restrict the GPL at all. They only want their name! Their name! Wait. Everyone is freaking out because they don't want to be affiliated with CentOS with their name? Wow. People are way too quick to accuse. Everyone that gets angry at this post, please just learn some maturity and get over it. Let them have their name. If you have a problem with it, then just shut up and go back to using the crap that is Windows. The true Linux community doesn't need ignorance or hot-tempered fools. It needs skilled developers and dedicated followers.
> I'm sure that the folks over at White Box Enterprise Linux really appreciate you pointing the RedHat lawyers their way.
:) Unlike the Centos folks I know where the line is without needing a lawyer to read to me and already explained that to a low level RH legal troll last year when they emailed an obviously boilerplate notice. After all we happen to be a public library and therefore already deal with IP issues on a daily basis.
They already know I exist so no problem.
While I'd hate tangling with RH (because I actually like them) a lot more than I was spoiling for a fight with the CueCat idiots a few years ago, in the end it would be the same result, they would lose.
Democrat delenda est
Yet there's also an interest in people not being able to claim that they are wikipedia.org, the site where the work is being built.
A trademark on "wikipedia" might seem like one way to proceed, in part because that covers all of the other domains in various countries, until you notice that trademark law may then restrict of others from distributing the title page part of the work, "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
Now, it seems fairly clear that the Wikimedia Foundation would inevitably have to be granting a license to use the trademark name because that's required for others to distribute the work, something the Foundation is required to do by the GFDL license the Foundation is granted by the authors of the encyclopedia.
The United States Supreme Court has touched this general area of the interaction between copyright and trademark law in its Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp decision. That held that a trademark couldn't be used to prevent the publc domain right to use a work. That's correctly taken as a major victory for the public domain but very similar logic also seems to apply when it comes to trademarks for open source works, particularly when, as in the Wikipedia case, the prospective trademark owner isn't the author of the work but simply a (albeit very important!) licensee.
Still, it's uncomfortably messy and it would be nice if a future GFDL version clarified that trademark law may not be used to prohibit distribution of the correctly named work either, as it does now for technnical means.
This is an area which the Creative Commons ShareAlike License seems to better resolve in the wording of its license grant, though it's still not as explicit as it might usefully be.
The views in this post are mine alone. No part of this post should be taken as reflecting the views of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board - indeed, it's possible that the Foundation or one or more of its Board members might disagree, since it's not something I've discussed with the whole board.
I bet they could still put it in their meta tags,
at least until redhat notices.
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
I've been saying this for years, Redhat is trying to become the next Microsoft. They are the Redmond of linux.
Burn in hell Redmond Hat, in the cell between Balmer and Gates.
I don't mean to sound rude and I understand that by posting on this strange notice board you are being careful about how you expend you engery. However, could you not debate a topic a little more interesting than linux and crap like that.
Hope you are having a wonderful day- though clearly not as you would not be writing such irrelevant trite if you were. I am having a terrible day and that is why i logged on, so i suspect i am not alone in the bad day stakes- but i tell you it just got worse
Wow, John speaks. That's amazing most of us thought he was dead since we haven't heard from him in months.