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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 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.
And it should be noted that this issue seems more about trademark and contract law, and less about copyright...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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.
Don't get off on some persecution trip... RH will "deal" with the others in time. They have a legitimate worry about product confusion, as really they are not selling an OS, but rather they are selling support for a spacific distro of a free OS. Confusion about CentOS and others made from RHAS source could hurt their real product, support.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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
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".
Because CentrOS is a "Look! A Red Hat without a price!"-company while Mandrake has their own business model which does not claim to be a free Red Hat.
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
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
Why have a public web site you don't allow people to link/see? Any website with such a rule should have their domain pulled.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
They were not inspired to use the name "Fedora" from Cornell/Virginia's project. I'm pretty sure they actually took the name from the "other" Fedora Project, fedora.us which was an "extras" repository project to supplement RedHat 7-9, and recieved RedHat sponsorship in exchange for running the entire "home version" distro of RedHat instead of just supplementing it. This was so RedHat could themselves focus solely on Enterprise (pay) software. The Fedora.us project is now located at fedoraproject.org although they still maintain their old URL. Interestingly, this Fedora Project is also run by a university, Hawaii in this case. In all cases I'd say they're the "real" Fedora Project, and that Cornell/Virginia's choice of names was just unlucky.
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.
I wonder. Will Oracle install on Centos if Centos can't say it's binary-compatible with Red Hat?
> CentOS is not just "like" RedHat - it literally *IS* RedHat Linux! Same sources, same compile tree.
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Soooo? Have you heard of GPL?
> Can you imagine the SHITFIT that Coca-Cola would have if there was a competing product called "Co-sola - Coca-Cola derived soda"???
Last time I checked their recipe was a trade secret (i.e. not even patented); if you managed to steal it and market a "Co-Sola - Coca-Cola-Derived Soda", you'd help them to bust you for theft and jail you. You could also be sued for misusing their registered trademark to sell a competing product.
To sum it up:
a) Coca Cola's recipe is a proprietary recipe not published under GPL
b) You stole it
c) You misused their Reg. TM to advertise a competing product
And CentOS:
a) Is based on Red Hat's OS (GPL) which anyone can redistribute
b) They did not steal the source code, SRPMs are publicly available on the Web/FTP and RH is obliged to make them available
c) CentOS has not mislead any customers - they only pointed to RH's Web site as the source (base) of their product. And prior to receiving the letter they had a disclaimer about them not being associated with RH in any way.
> RedHat is being very, very good about this.
They're wrong and dicks about the whole thing.
Take a look at this post:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=