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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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I don't see anything wrong with this. He is protecting the name and still allowing it to be accessible to your every day developers/programmers.
If a company has more than 1 million in revenue, 5k is pocket change. While 200 dollars is well within range of a couple of guys programming in their basement. And this also allows some protection for those guys in their basement if someone tries to take their name. They might not have the money for a legal battle, but for 200 bucks they can insure their name.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
It may not be about the money, but it still costs plenty to keep a trademark. Some money needs to be charged just to break even.
I mean, what's the new thing? The previous two articles made it clear that it costs between $200 and $5k. Linus posted about it on LKML and basically confirmed. Why is it a bad thing? Well, if anything blame the trademark system, that someone needs to agressively protect a trademark.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
After several days of reading about this subject and totally wrong commenting on it myself, here the groklaw link:0 92029989
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050816
This article links to
http://www.linuxmark.org/
This explains everything, so a lot of projects should pay, but at this moment they are just trying to make up for the cost of protecting the trademark by going after big players (>1mln US$).
I only disagree with one thing: A trademark does not garantee quality at the moment of rewarding the trademark. You only know that the product sucked when the trademark is revoked because of bad quality.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
But why charging non-profit uses?
I don't have a problem with companies earning money with Linux based products to have to pay for using the trademark. But non-profit uses should be cost-free.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You don't have to pay to use the software. You don't have to distribute it or anything based on it either. You don't even have to pay for selling it. You do have to pay for calling the thing yor distribute "Linux" (or anything which contains "Linux").
For example, Knoppix will not have to pay anything, because it's not named "Linux", but, well, "Knoppix". I'm not sure if "Linspire" is already considered close enough to "Linux" to need a license, however.
Note that software licensing and trademark licensing are two completely different things. For example, if you make a Linux Distro and name it "T-Linux", I'm sure you'll get trouble with the Deutsche Telekom, depite them not being involved with Linux code at all: AFAIK they have a trademark on the initial "T-" part (T-Online, T-Mobile,
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Your list is incorrect.
1. Does it SAY Linux in the product name?
Y - Pay for a License
N - Don't need a License
2. The Linux Name has integrity and is not watered down
Everybody needs to stop jumping to conclusions and read what is actually trying to be done here.
"Once you own a trademark, the next phase (at least in the US) is to make sure it stays protected by policing the use."
That's only one option. The another option is to allow it to become public domain.
Much closer to the spirit of OSS in my opinion, but I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying so.
Trademarks are not expensive or hard to come by, believe it or not. You may be told you need an agent. Believe me, if you are intelligent enough to be a software developer, it is easy to navigate trademark paperwork. You do not need an agent. You need to behave like a developer using a new technology, i.e. read the documents, follow the rules. (Yes, I practice what I preach. I took out 2 trademarks last year, for a total of about 10 hours of actual work starting from scratch, though admittedly it was not the first time.)
My big recommendation: develop a generic trademark that does not depend on appearance. It is a nice stealth weapon.
Why are trademarks nice?
- You use them to protect your own name and reputation
- You can use them in documentation you produce; if anyone steals your work and is stupid enough to leave in the trademark (yes, they are) you have a nice clear infringement and their lawyers will probably tell them to stop or pay up.
- They actually get you taken seriously.
- They do not cause complicated copyright and patent issues of themselves.
I have to add a caveat. In the US trademarks are a bit broken. A trademark in one area is allowed to spill into another, so that our favorite software company was allowed to prevent another company, not a software company, calling itself Gentium. In Europe the rules are clearer and enforced, so if I trademark "we make things that don't suck" as a mark of a software company, I cannot then prevent (say) a manufacturer of compressors from using the same descriptive mark. But that doesn't invalidate the idea. Trademarking the name of a software product, or a phrase associated with it, means that someone cannot simply steal your name and reputation even though they can, perfectly legitimately, reuse your GPLed code.Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.