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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 wounder if this also applies to whitebox linux?
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.
Eerily similar to Orbitz story covered today we see the following in their email message:
So people can't link to Red Hat?
Does this mean the end of RPMs?
I mean this seems a little crazy if they can not mention Red Hat. RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. What about the comments in the code that mention Red Hat?
I would say a little bit reason would be nice here.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"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....
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
Red Hat is expensive, so is SuSE. Unfortunately when I speak to a PHB in terms of Linux he only thinks these are the alternatives. I did use CentOS for a development box when I needed an Enterprise-level OS there and then. The version of SuSE I had wouldn't work and I didn't have the time. CentOS just worked. No one complained about it until they found out it wasn't SuSE. "Oooo, naughty boy, what have you done? You installed a piece of software which is not condoned by the company". But it bloody works! No one is interested. It is not SuSE.
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.
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
I agree. The case on point is Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Welles 279 F.3d 796 (2002). It held that a former Playboy Playmate/former Playmate of the Year could mention those facts on her website.
I don't see how this is any different. It is a fact that Centos uses Red Hat's distro.
I don't see how Red Hat has any legal basis to stop Centos other than FUD.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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
So why not call your new distro, "RedHat-compatible". Meaning, redhat certified software can run on your new distro.
In one case, I can see RedHat being concerned with "here is the Free version of RedHat Linux!", they don't want some free-product thinking it is _the_ redhat linux product.
On the otherhand, one should be able to mention that this new distro is a fork of RedHat AS 3.x. It is redhat-compatible. Also if RedHat is releasing a GPL software(i.e. kernel) you should be able to say kernel-2.4-3.2as by RedHat. Meaning you have to give credit to the authors. But according to their terms you can't say "contains Red Hat Enterprise Linux X.X.".
No, that would using Coca Cola as a trade mark. But writing "Taste just like Coca Cola" on the side would be ok, since you are referring to the name. Or so I understand.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
There is a bit of revisionist history going on here. The project at www.fedora.info originally used the acronym f.e.d.o.r.a. and their project name was actually Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture.
I'm not sure i see the irony, considering the project you are refering to didn't feel compelled to even attempt to register fedora as a protected mark. You can't 'steal' a trademark if the trademark hasn't been registered.
Protecting the trademark is not necessarily synonymous with preventing others from using it. They could just as easily say:
"If you want to use our trademarks in this context, but you must mention that CentOS does not come with any of the services that RHEL does so please add the following text to relavent portions of your site..."
Trademarks get licensed all the time, and if RH was bing smart about it, they would see this as a marketing oportunity rather than a threat to their trademark rights.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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?
To me it seems like a perfectly sane request that got filtered through a junior lawyer with an insane lust for control.
Probably Red Hat shouldn't be excessively blamed for the tone, but they really SHOULD speak quite harshly to him, so he doesn't do that again.
OTOH, it was quite polite. Restrained. That's not the kind of tone I'm talking about.
After reading the original note I was left with the impression that the words "Red Hat" should not be present on the CentOS site. I was left with the impression that all text files should be edited to remove any mention of the name and any reference to their site.
I'm rather sure that most people at Red Hat wouldn't want that to be understood as the request, and I'm rather certain that the lawyer FAR overstepped what was legally allowable as a demand (though it was "technically" a request rather than a demand).
Caution: IANAL, but I would hesitate to do business with any company that sent me such a letter. Ever again. And I'm uncertain about doing it with a company that sends such a letter to someone else. Doing business with them could get expensive. And I don't do business with companies to keep lawyers in Cadillacs.
I'm really quite certain that Red Hat did not intend to be communicating such a message. But that was the message I got from reading the letter.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not only that, the code is GPL'ed as well, hence making it obligatory for distributors to provide access to this code and all its contents, including "Red Hat" comments.
Lets say CentOS copy the "RedHat" code snippet from any RH authored GPL'ed code and use this on their website. Are they inviolation of the RedHat trademark ( I have never heard any other company threatening others over the use of their company name in this way, the action seems to be with no legal merit ), or are RedHat in violation of the GPL for trying to suppress material licensed in a way that permits unlimited distribution?
Show me a case in the brick and mortar world... where the phrase "based on" was a ligitmate way to use a competitor's trademark when advertising a competing product without expressed permission to use the trademark.
We aren't talking about a review article.. we aren't talking about the use of the company name in a bio or resume..and we aren't even talking about a side by side product feature comparison.
"Based on" implies a an associative relationship with the other product.
There are a number of ways Centos could use the trademarks in established fair-use ways.. and "based on" just isn't one of them:
Here let me give you some simple brick and mortar ways to do the advertising without using "based-on"
1) Blind taste-tests:
9-10 system admin surveyed that have used both Centos and RHEL say Centos works as well as RHEL
2) Comparative usage case studies:
Centos versus RHEL as a printer server
Centos versus RHEL as a database server
Centos versus RHEL as a file server
3) side by side comparative lists of features/packages versions.
None of these forms of advertising need to state that Centos is "based on" RHEL. You can present Centos as a compatible solution simply through comparison without implying Red Hat was invovled with its development at all.
What I envision as the target user for WBEL is someone looking for what Red Hat Linux used to be, i.e. somewhere between where Fedora and RHEL are now. Longterm version stability and errata support without the annual per processor support contracts.
Which is exactly what I wanted, a disto that was "RedHat" enough that all the years of knowledge of the way they configure a UNIX/Linux box would still be valid, covered by errata long enough I wouldn't be forever rolling new versions out, but without the support contracts that I don't really need. None of my boxes are controlling millions of dollars of commerce or anything like that and I know enough to do 99% of the support myself anyway.
That is the wonderful thing about Open Source, I couldn't find what I wanted but was free to do it myself so I did. Others find it useful and we get far more valuable feedback back than the the effort of making it generally available costs us making it a win-win for everyone. And we rebuilders (me at WhiteBox, Tao, cAos, Scientific Linux, etc.) beat on the RHEL srpms in ways RH doesn't so we find new bugs and pass them back up into bugzilla so even they get something back.
Democrat delenda est