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Red Hat & Centos On Name Usage

Posted by Hemos on from the same-problem-as-a-long-time dept.

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."

4 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Something's wrong here... by Dink+Paisy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I'm an advocate of intellectual property rights, which puts me somewhat in the minority here. Still, this goes too far.

    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
  2. Re:Gosh... by matthewcharlesgoeden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course, RH is "here for the money," but that is not exactly why they are enforcing their TM rights.

    Generally, if one does not protect their TM, they will lose their TM rights. That is all RH is doing. If they didn't at least try to protect their "Red Hat," then they would lose their rights to "Red Hat."

    TM protection is generally a good thing for users!! TMs are partially desiged to protect consumer confusion. Wouldn't the world suck if RH was no longer a TM and all sorts of jackasses came out with Red Hat named distros.

  3. Re:Makes Sense, kind of by justins · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the support perspective, it makes sense. A person using CentOS might call Red Hat for support if they see Red Hat CentOS.

    The funny part is, these rules ruthlessly enforced prevent CentOS or someone in a similar position from placing in their documentation the message "do not contact Red Hat for support."
    --
    Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
  4. There is truly nothing like free advertising by deadline · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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