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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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To prevent more FUD being spread, please read
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
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:
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.