Slashdot Mirror
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."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....
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
The niche for Centos and Whitebox is pretty small, but real. It's not enough to have a good support contract, there is also the faith that a good support contract is most profitable if you ship a product that rarely has failure. If what you need is not nine nines of availability, but maybe seven and a half, Whitebox is for you. Can't afford a support contract, but want an enterprise proven stable OS? Then Whitebox and Centos are currently as close as you come. Until OpenSolaris comes out.
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.
I build linux clusters and compute farms for biotech and pharma customers.
Redhat is often required due to the demands of certain commercial scientific software.
We need distros like Centos and Tao because we need a stable OS that has a multi-year lifespan. As others mentioned -- an every-6-months upgrade for Fedora Linux is not cool when you have production systems doing heavy science 24/7.
If Redhat had a sane pricing model for scientific computing I'd gladly pay for it. As it stands though their cheapest WS line is for low end X86 systems. If you have a cluster of opterons or boxes with more than 4GB RAM (very common) you are forced to go with the enterprise line which costs thousands of dollars per machine each and every year. This is not feasable even for enterprise customers (unless they have a site license with Redhat).
This is why over the past year or two I've started deploying clusters based on Suse and Centos.
my $.02
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
Because you want to run Oracle software, and Oracle software is only certified on RHEL and SuSE enterprise server.
I know developers who want to install Oracle at home to learn about using it, i know dba's who want to install it to learn about the new features of the RDBMS.
Right now if you want to do that, you'd have to buy RHEL. If oracle would test against fedora or something similar, i wouldn't need CentOS.
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
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)
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.
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?