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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."
All occurances of "Red Hat" will be replaced with "Rat Hed".
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?
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.
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.
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?
Good luck enforcing this or convincing a judge about this.
Not.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.
"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
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".
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]
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
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.
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.
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
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
Deep linking is perfectly legal.
Looks like Red Hat's plans are going straight down the toilet.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
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.
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)
You've obviously never used Red Hat or have never been in a position to have to admin hundreds or thousands of machines. Red Hat offers a really good product, it is priced cheaper then any of the competition, by far (look at Suse's support pricing options for enterprise, and Microsoft's per incident or 5-pack incident pricing). Red Hat's support is honestly the best I've ever experienced and they contribute more to the kernel then any other source so their products tend to work and integrate really well. Perhaps people should start looking into things before speaking, rather then listening to what the slahbots have to say.
Regards,
Steve
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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?
They should probably add that the vendor is named after a head covering that reflects light around 700 nm.
Sometimes it is referred to as RedHat, without a space between the Red & Hat.