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Linux Trademark Fun Continues
Orre noted an article running on internetnews about LMI's efforts to
license the Linux trademark to companies that use it. Prices range from $200 to $5k for companies with over a million bucks in revenue.
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because lmi tries to get self sufficient. currently they lose money (lawyers, etc.).
To prevent more FUD being spread, please read
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The trademark just means that you cannot call yourself "Linux".
If you call your distro "Swaziland Linux", you need to buy a license.
If you call your distro "Swazilandix" or "Swaziland Operating Environment", etc, you don't need any license at all.
If you start selling soda and call it KevinConaway Coke, you need a license from Coca-Cola. If you call it KevinConaway's Cola, you're ok.
Trademarks are different than patents or copyrights. They exist to protect the integrity of a brand -- not the ideas.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Red Hat doesn't have one because they aren't using 'Linux' in their name. It's Red Hat, Inc.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
There are several reasons why that approach won't work. This groklaw post covers the issues very thoroughly.
As has been explained at great lengths on groklaw, you are absolutely free for example to make a Linux distribution named "Knoppix" without having to pay anything, and obviously you are allowed to say "Knoppix is a Linux (R) distribution. Linux (R) is a registered trademark of the owner of the Linux trademark."
You are not allowed to create a distribution and call it "Knoppix Linux" without paying for the trademark. And Microsoft is not allowed to distribute "Microsoft Linux" without paying for the trademark. And once Linux takes over the computing world, Microsoft will not be allowed to rename "Vista" to "Linux" and distribute it as "Microsoft Linux" at all, in order to retain a tiny bit of market share, because Linus can refuse to let anyone use "Linux" in a product name if it isn't Linux what they are selling.
Trademark law is different from copyright law. The fact that in the US the same governmental agency handles both doesn't make them the same.
The software is free, and you don't have to pay to use it. If you want to register a trademark which contains "Linux" in it, then you need to license the use of "Linux".
Linus also said:
;]"
l kml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95+&hl=en [Google cache}
"[ And don't get me wrong - I follow slashdot too, exactly because it's fun
to see people argue. I'm not complaining
Since it's now salshdotted, see http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:HR1UTE7bLf0J:
[i]I guess information wants to be free, but not as in beer.[/i]
A trademark is hardly 'Information' in the sense of the word that free software advocates would purport it.
Consider if Microsoft created a terrible linux distro purposely, and called it Ubuntu, and marketed it as Ubuntu (not assocaited with MS) on the web. The people over at the real Ubuntu would want to fight back. That's the power of the trademark, it protects your name and image, not your 'information'.
Probably worth mentioning, because some people seem to think it's an issue: it's not necessary to infringe upon a trademark to make a program work the way you want it to work. There's nothing inherently wrong with trademarks, either in theory or in practice, in fact, when properly used they provide a useful way of ensuring people can't pass off their stuff as something else.
Not that they're impossible to abuse, but I don't see any evidence Linus is abusing them. Actually, I'd go further than that: At the moment, Linus isn't making any money from the operation, seeing it as something that should be self-funding and non-profit. I know a lot of people are defending him against supposed charges that this is not what's happening, as if there'd be something wrong if it was a profitable operation.
But if he wants to make a profit from it, I'm not going to criticise him for that. He did some initial work that, while it may be overrated (the GNU tools form a bigger, more complicated, and IMNSHO, more useful part of the end user operating system than his kernel), was useful to many people and captured a lot of mindshare. He associated a corruption of his name to that program. And he has managed that project for more than a decade. In the view of most free software people, and I'm one of them, it would be unethical for him to be rewarded by crippling the program itself, preventing people from being able to improve it and to help one another. But making money from the mindshare aspect, from being able to say "This is Linux, the Real Thing. The version officially blessed by Linus Torvalds, as you can see from the name"? That's fine by me. That's actually beneficial to everyone.
The software continues to be free. Sure, my version will have to be called "Squiggix". Your version will have to be called "Nuclearelephantix". The fact we can't call them Linux, we can't claim they're the real thing without actually funding the project, is hardly damaging to our freedom. And it certainly helps Linus, should he ever want to, to make sure his name is only a[tt]ached to versions he has control over (a key artistic moral right - nobody should have to be associated with something they didn't endorse), and helps end users choose on the basis of active support for Linux, and the stamp of approval of a known person.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If you had a valid sublicense before August 2004 you are grandfathered in for free. Based on that I expect that Red Hat doesn't have to purchase a license at all. Perhaps Novell did need to purchase a license due to Suse changing hands, or maybe they just chose to opt in and avoid any potential hassle. After all, the cost is quite negligible for them.
non-profit != without money
Non-profit also means that you spend as much as you get.
But for correction please read Linus mail to lkml list, it provides lot of details and destroys this oversensational post and articles which caused that.
It is simple - if you are non-profit and want to call your product 'My Linux Babe', you can do it - just you won't get ANY protection when someone also takes this title. BUT if you are sublicenser of trademark "Linux", then your title is also protected.
It is clear I guess as that.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Most of you probably do not remember him. He fraudulently registered the Linux trademark in 1996 and asked people to pay for use of the name "Linux".
Many of you now seem to think the name Linux does not need to be protected. You either have short memory or are too young to know what battles Linus had to fight to get here.
Most of you are free-loaders anyway. Interested only in what you are getting for free and contributing nothing back. Most of you given half the chance would have really cashed out on Linux, unlike Linus Torvalds.
See: http://www2.linuxjournal.com/article/2425 for some of the history.