Slashdot Mirror
Australian Linux Trademark Holds Water
Seft writes "The Inquirer is running a story in response to the recent Linux trademark news in Australia which was previously covered on Slashdot. The story was dismissed as a hoax by many, but now it seems that Linus Torvalds is dead serious." John 'Maddog' Hall stated for the article that the move was not about getting a slice of anyone's action but purely to protect the quality of products that utilize the Linux name.
After all, some of the things said about the lawyer involved in this case were less than civilised or polite, and indeed a lot of posters had him mixed up with someone else of a similiar name. So, anyone willing to retract what they said?
It helps to show that you've made a good faith effort in defending your trademark if you have documentation showing how you've licensed the trademark, and if you've gone after people who have not licensed that trademark.
If Linus does nothing, Microsoft could call the next version of Windows Linux (not that I believe that would happen), and nobody could do a thing about it. Knowing the Patent Office, Microsoft would then be granted the Linux trademark, and would charge $10 per copy... Chaos would ensue, etc.
Free as in Speech, as long as you don't use our Trademark.
But a lot of open source licenses have exactly this restriction, like the Apache License
And lots of others too, mainly extending from the time when Open Source was driven from universities Berkely, MIT who didn't want their 'Trademark' abused.
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why not just ask for $1
Because setting up, administrating and defending a trademark are not free. You have to cover the actual cost. Or are you suggesting that Linus should pay out of his own pocket the expenses involved for dealing with commercial entities using his trademark.
Especially the comments. Especially the ones about $200 being a ludicrously high fee to rip off a not-for-profit's back. This really goes against the grain, guys and gals. Linus needs to be told off, and this shady lawyer needs to be muzzled promptly.
Also, why not give the name to the FSF? They do a pretty good job managing other people's trademarks, without charging an arm and a leg off the community for it.
But seriously... This is nuts. I live in a country where $200 is a bit more than the average monthly wage. No *inux will be left here. At all.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
BTW, PJ on GrokLaw has an interesting piece on this issue.
As I understand the matter, Linus gets the massive sum of $0 from Linux. From this enormous war chest, he has to spend money on lawyers and C&D letters defending the use of the registered trade name; if he doesn't defend it, the trademark is lost, and anyone can use the name for any purpose they like, good or bad (as, for example, a hypothetical Microsoft Linux that had nothing to do with real Linux and just served to fragment the community).
Clearly, there is good reason for SOMEONE to protect the use of the Linux name, and this takes money. The numbers I've seen for the fees being charged to license the name for trade use do not appear unreasonable (and if you're using a Linux product someone else produced, you don't pay anything, plus there are the aforementioned fair-use exceptions), the folks the money goes to are an independent foundation that only manages the trade mark (nobody is being enriched by it), and there doesn't seem to be any other viable alternative if the trademark is to be protected from misuse.
With this in mind, I don't find Linus' actions the least bit disturbing or unreasonable.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
LMI and Maddog have been, according to the Groklaw article, EXPLICITLY authorized to do this.
And your entire position on "eclipsing the Linux brand" is completely irrelevant to Linus, I would believe, because it is not the BRAND that he cares about WHEN we are talking about the CODE. It is only the BRAND he cares about when we are talking about the NAME as used by commercial entities.
I believe that as long as the code is GPL and derived from Linux code, he doesn't care what it ultimately ends up being called, as long as someone isn't producing something that ISN'T Linux code and calling it Linux.
The entire point of this is to prevent people from turning out something that is NOT LINUX CODE and calling it Linux.
The revenue letters are to get some companies to support the trademark protection effort, which, as the Groklaw article points out, is a necessary effort to prevent the dilution of the name Linux, which would allow people to produce NON-LINUX-DERIVED products and call them Linux.
If you HAVE Linux code and you call it Brandix, it's irrelevant. First, because people will simply call it Brandix Linux. Secondly, because it is still Linux code.
Knoppix is Linux code, does not use the Linux name, and nobody (that I know of) misunderstands what it is, nor does Linus AFAIK insist that it pay a trademark fee.
If you create a Linux distro, and give it away, AFAIK you don't have to pay the trademark fee - you only have to refer to its origin as "LinuxCircleR", the trademark symbol. If you derive revenue from that distro, then you need to pay the trademark fee so that Linus and the LMI can demonstrate in court that they control that trademark.
I could be wrong about whether other free distros need to pay the fee - someone correct me about this if that is the case. In any event, a free distro would be considered a non-profit according to the fee scale, and the fee would be $200, then - which would only affect one-man distros who are too poor to pay it.
So how is that in any way different from your scenario? It's already happened and nobody cares. And it has had absolutely no effect on the Linux name except to protect it from people like Microsoft.
Personally, I find the whole thing unfortunate that it has to be done, but I'm an anarchist, so that's irrelevant.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!