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Stallman Claims Linux Trademark Doesn't Matter
Tontoman writes "ZDNet UK reports on an interview with Richard Stallman with the Sydney Morning Herald. From the article: '"Free software means you're free to run it, study it, change it, redistribute it, and distribute modified versions the way cooks do with recipes. What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue." The Linux trademark became an issue last month after a lawyer acting on behalf of Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote to 90 Australian companies asking that they sign a statutory declaration waiving exclusive rights to the trademark's use.'"
They are only regulating using the name Linux. So you can create an own Linux distro called "Aussiex", just don't call it "Aussie Linux" and you don't have to pay anything.
So Linux is open for modification and distribution..... as long as Linus feels that you aren't harming his trademark? [sarcasm] Wow, that's certainly open.[/sarcasm]
How does the trademark stop you from modifying and distributing Linux freely? The only thing it stops you from is using the name "Linux" commercially in ways he doesn't like.
Big. Difference.
You can't make your own OSS spreadsheet program either and name it "Microsoft Excel".
I guess with Linux's userbase (both corporate and private) continuing to grow, Linus (or at least a lawyer working on his behalf) feels that perhaps they need to begin regulating Linux a bit more closely.
FYI: "Linux" was trademarked in 1996 by a lawyer who didn't have anything to do with Linux and then proceeded to ask for royalties from companies using it.
After a legal scuffle, Linus Torvalds was assigned the copyright in 1997 (So this is news?), and has licensed it since. The Linux Mark Institute has been around for years as well. (Can't recall exactly when they started, but archive.org dates their page to at least 2002).
"Linux" is a term with commercial potential. If Linus didn't own the trademark, someone else would (and did). And they would hardly charge any less.
just don't call it "Aussie Linux" and you don't have to pay anything.
You can call your distro "Aussie Linux" without paying as well. What you can't do is use Linux in a trademark i.e. naming your company "Aussie Linux" without getting permission and paying the fee.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
And the same thing just happened in Australia which is why there's been this push to get the trademark assigned to Linus down here recently. If only it wasn't handled so badly.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So Linux is open for modification and distribution.....
Yup, that has never changed.
as long as Linus feels that you aren't harming his trademark?
Yup, that hasn't changed, either. Linux (the kernal) is free for modification and redistribution. Use of the name Linux(R) is subject to trademark. In part to prevent say SUN, from marketing Solar Linux, which is really just Solaris with linux compatability.
[sarcasm] Wow, that's certainly open.[/sarcasm]
Yup, it is. Do what you like, just don't besmirtch the name. Thats just horribly closed. What would Stallman say if someone made a piece of software called GNU, but it was completly proprietary? What if some hardware company makes a software modem that only works with Windows, and calls it "the Linux modem"?
I guess with Linux's userbase (both corporate and private) continuing to grow, Linus (or at least a lawyer working on his behalf) feels that perhaps they need to begin regulating Linux a bit more closely.
The name, yeah.
Perhaps they will slowly begin to make it not-quite-so-open as well.
No less open than it's ever been.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
You're just ignorant. Linux has been a registered trademark since 1996 and people have always sublicensed it from the Linus through the Linux Mark Institute to use in their business name. The recent snaffu has been as a result of an Australian company attempting to register the trademark down here without Linus' approval so they could demand fees. Linux Australia prevented this from happening and then got companies using the mark in Australia to sign a statutory declaration stating that they support Linux Australia in aquiring the trademark in Linus' name.
Linus hasn't changed any of the "rules". If you want to call your distro, dog, skateboard, girlfriend or whatever Linux, go ahead. But if you wanna call your business Linux you have to get permission.
Never assign to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, especially your own.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I urge you to look at what open source advocates and authors actually get paid for. It's quite capitalist, and profitable, and doesn't steal a darned thing. Also, far more new ideas and development are coming out of the open source world, on a programmer by programmer basis, then ever came out of the corporate software world.
The fiscal incentives do CHANGE and are displaced, from middle management's ability to seal the box and not have their clients able to use any other product and thus the growth of monopolistic and anti-competitive, even non-capitalist companies, and allowing a much smaller start-up cost in buying the software licenses to do development. The money instead goes in-house to local developers, and far more smaller opportunities for local variation is created.
It's fun, it's profitable, and I'm certainly making a living at working with tools at least 5 years ahead of where they'd be without such open source tools.
I agree with the sentiment but you're not 100% correct. If you call your distro "Aussie Linux" and you sell it you're using it as a trademark. Trademarks cover both business names and product names (and logos).
How we know is more important than what we know.
The quote from the article is:
'Free software means you're free to run it, study it, change it, redistribute it, and distribute modified versions the way cooks do with recipes. What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue..The Linux trademark became an issue last month after a lawyer acting on behalf of Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote to 90 Australian companies asking that they sign a statutory declaration waiving exclusive rights to the trademark's use.'
On first reading this, I got the idea that the whole thing was a quote from RMS, since it was from an interview with him.
However, the second sentence (after the ellipsis) is a quote from the article, not from RMS.
How does the Free Software philosophy encourage taking the fruits of someone's "capitalist labor" (a bizarre turn of phrase)? I've never noticed RMS condoning the illegal use of proprietary software. Instead, he encourages replacing that proprietary software as soon as possible.
I fear you don't quite understand the issue. There was a very nice link on Groklaw explaining it that I now can't remember (which is a bit embarassing, actually).
Basically, the situation works like this. Let's say you want to create a version of Linux. To use a ridiculous example, we'll call it Cthulhu Linux (the operating system from the dawn of time!). If you want to use the name "Cthulhu Linux", you have to pay the trademark fee.
However, you can use a different name for it, say, "Tentaclix". Then, if you want to credit the base OS, you can then say "Based on Linux(R)", credit the trademark to Linus Torvalds, and you don't have to pay a cent. The only time you have to pay is if you're using "Linux" as part of the name of the product.
The reason Torvalds is doing this is to prevent somebody from using the Linux name to debase the operating system, or put it into a bad light. If people have to actually be approved to use the trademark, a Microsoft shill can't get away with passing some FUD off as a Linux magazine, etc.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Actually, people were using GNU tools long before Linux came around. They were just using them on proprietary platforms.
Without a readily available source of free system software, Linux would have been taking a dive into an empty pool. A kernel is worthless without a system around it, and vice versa. However, the supply of free system software is and was much more limited than the supply of kernels -- and it's easier to install GNU on your SunOS system than Linux on that same system.
Because 100% of the C/C++ programs are built with gcc, including the MIT/KDE software. People are forgetting that the FSF not only contributed the standard utilities and libraries, but ALSO gcc.
Without gcc being available to Linus, it is doubtful whether there would even have been a kernel to compile. Linus would have had to resort to a commercial compiler, which back then typically cost around $500.
The most common ones then came from either SCO or ATT.
The widespread adoption of Linux would've been slowed significantly if people had to fork over $500 for a development kit, and probably another $200-500 for a commercial OS, just so they could run Linux.
This is why we're indebted to the FSF for their efforts. And they are right to insist upon credit for themselves. Without the FSF, Linux wouldn't be nearly as far along as it is today. Giving the FSF due recognition seems quite appropriate; and frankly, I just don't see people giving the FSF the respect it deserves (witness your comments), let alone due credit.
And don't forget that it was RMS himself who encouraged Linus to adopt the GPL for his kernel. Without the GPL, it is also questionable how far along Linux would be today.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Once upon a time, somebody named Richard Stallman got pissed off because he needed to see the source code to a program so he could fix it, and the code author told him he was restricted by an NDA.
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html
He was so miffed at this that he went off and founded GNU (Gnu's Not Unix), meant to be a free version of Unix.
http://www.gnu.org/
"dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs." But there was (and still is) one problem with the GNU operating system...it didn't have the kernel (the part of the OS that talks to the hardware at the lowest level), which project was known as the HURD
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
which is STILL "not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features."
Enter Linus Torvalds, who, unaware of the GNU project, undertook to write his *own* kernel upon which he would then put an operating system that was to be, you guessed it, a free version of Unix. Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman got adjascent seats on an airplane with their luggage mixed up or something; however they met, they met, and with Torvalds' kernel and Stallman's operating system it was indeed the birth of the blues.
Fade out, fade in. Today, we have the Free (as in freedom *and* beer) Operating System that is part GNU, part Linux, and even part BSD (I stumble upon the occasional BSD program running on my Linux system ), and part everything else. In a commercial world, there'd be trademarks and copyrights and logos and every other byte of binary on your disk would be the stupid trademark/OS EULA/NDA warning of legal repercussions, etc. Windows users, get *any* hex editor, open *any* Windows program, you'll see "Microsoft" written in the ASCII somewhere: this is what I'm talking about. But this is Linux. Nobody really owns it all per se, because we basement hackers and renegade computer users and indignant MIT lab rats wrote it all ourselves, and don't really care about becoming millionaires or dominating the world about it, so long as we have our free system.
Oh come on man. Please don't criticize if you don't know what you're talking about. Just because they modded you Informative rather than Flamebait (signifies how clueless the mods are), I'll address the points you make:
``and here comes Stallman with his, "Hey, news people, the issue isn't the Linux trademark! It's that it's not called GNU to give me credit!"''
That's not what he said at all. Quoth RMS:
"Free software means you're free to run it, study it, change it, redistribute it, and distribute modified versions -- the way cooks do with recipes. What names you're allowed to call a program is a side issue."
So he said that naming doesn't matter, what matters is that you can freely modify and redistribute the software.
As for the GNU/ prefix, it's true that in a typical Linux distribution, far more of the code comes from GNU than comes from Linux. Your arrogance and ignorance w.r.t. the contribution of GNU to the success of Linux makes me think that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the GNU project were more loudly credited for their work.
``The fact is, GNU was going nowhere without Linus' kernel.''
Give me a break. People were using GNU utilities on their proprietary Unixen all the time. If you look at a contemporary proprietary Unix system, you will probably find GNU software there. Often, the GNU utilities are more usable than the vendor supplied ones; if the vendor even supplies them. If you look at a BSD system, they invariably use the GNU C compiler. And what utilities do you think are used to build the Linux kernel?
``HURD (the intended GNU OS) is still a pipe dream because Stallman couldn't write a kernel if you paid him.''
Come on man. Stallman was one of two people working at Lisp Machines Inc before he started GNU. He and the other guy (what was his name again?) developed a system that was competitive with the one developed by the much larger Symbolics. Do you _really_ think RMS doesn't know how to write a kernel?
The HURD was never successful, because (contrary to the rest of GNU) it incorporated too many revolutionary ideas. It had to be better that the monolithic kernels found in Unix. Sadly, microkernels were (and are still) badly understood, which is why HURD development stalled. Then along came Linux and the free BSDs, and now people simply don't see a point in developing HURD anymore.
Interestingly, Linux allows most drivers to be built as modules, which brings it closer to the microkernel model that any other Unix kernel has been. With the sheer amount of gadgets, filesystems, etc. that are supported, modularity is almost a necessity. Could it be that the world is converging toward the model that HURD tried to push from the beginning?
``The facts are, that Linux was a kernel project without the rest of the OS, and GNU was....an incomplete OS. The two coming together didn't put one over another.''
Yes. So why are you saying that "GNU was going nowhere without Linux"? Sounds like you're putting one over another, doesn't it?
``A common statement is that "Linux is just the kernel" but that's not quite true. It's also a "brand name" that companies slap on their products''
You're spot on about the brand name, but it really is true that Linux is just a kernel in a technical sense. Linux needed GNU to be competitive with the free BSDs, which provide both a kernel and a userland. That's what the statement "Linux is just a kernel" really means.
``['Linux' is] also a shorthand term used by users of GNU/Linux (who do know there's plenty of GNU in there).''
Seriously, no. Do you know how many people have equated Linux with Red Hat? Do you really think that leaves a realistic chance that these people will realize the contribution the GNU project has made?
Too many people think that glibc, GNU make, GNU C, GNU emacs, etc. etc. etc. were developed for Linux, or, worse, these are the utilities that "Linux" supplies. RMS is whining about this issue, because it hurts him. How would you like it if
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Before you start lecturing other people on how to use the language, you might want to do a little brushing up of your own skills. The word you are looking for is probably 'retarded,' unless you are really trying to imply that the recursive acronyms in general, and GNU in particular, have been 'tarted,' through the addition of tart flavours, twice. That's not a word you're likely to find in any dictionary, but at least it would make some sense (by analogy to 'sweetened.) But retarded doesn't really work here either, it means slowed, hindered, or set back, none of which make much sense in this context.
Most likely I would think you were actually trying to say 'stupid' but 'retarded' is not really a synonym for stupid. In relation to a person, we might say that they are 'mentally retarded' as an explanation for their stupidity, of course, which is probably where you got the idea the two words are synonyms, but if true this is just a further sign of sloppy thinking.
The contention that recursive acronyms are grammatically incorrect is unsupported, incorrect, and generally leads me to suspect (particularly in context, next to the repeated use of 'retarted') that you might be mentally retarded to some degree yourself.
Perhaps because explorer was never a project to create an operating system, but simply a shell which runs as part of several OSs, on two entirely different types of kernel?
Perhaps because Darwin doesn't use the BSD kernel? It uses the XNU kernel, and a good deal of BSD userland, so a much better analogy would be calling Darwin the 'BSD/XNU OS.' Unlike what you posted, that would make some sense, and be recognisable as referring to something real, albeit in an unusual way. Of course it's not necessary, because in that case you have no ambiguity, but it would make sense to clarify things if Darwin somehow wound up with no proper name, and people were running around referring to the entire OS as 'XNU.'
No, GNU was a project with the explicit goal of creating a Free Operating System, which had progressed a very long ways already and produced everything required except a functional kernel. People were already running the GNU OS, on top of proprietary unix kernels, but without a Free kernel you still had to buy a proprietary system and then replace the userland to make a GNU system, so it was obviously important to get that last piece made. The GNU toolchain made linux possible, and linux completed the GNU OS in return.
Obviously in addition to the mental/linguistic difficulties noted earlier, your understanding of history is a bit deficient as well.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Socrates didn't live in a barrel, Diogenes the Cynic (of Sinope) did. Socrates also wasn't filthy, just ugly. Comparing Richard Stallman to Socrates or Gandhi is a little like comparing the Beatles to Jesus: yeah, Stallman may end up being a somewhat important historical figure, but you've got no sense of proportion when you make that kind of claim.
None of the above use the GNU C Library and GNU coreutils, which along with Linux and Bash are the most fundamental operating system pieces that combined make GNU/Linux a free clone of Unix.
It would have to be GNU/Linux® in order to comply with the trademark requirements.
It says so quite clearly here:
http://www.linuxmark.org/attribution.html
And page or post mentioning it should have the following attribution somewhere:
"Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries."
Obviously anyone using the word Linux without the ® as specified by the web page is using it incorrectly.
Deleted
Victim victim, boo-hoo... He'd probably ask you what part of being able to freely write whatever you want about him without fears of repercussions affecting any rights granted to you by the government on one of the most highly-read websites on the Internet you consider censorship. Was it the part when you were allowed to post anything you wanted, or was it the part when you were allowed to post a reply to your own post proclaiming victimhood, or was it the part when the page got indexed by Google for indefinite storage, or was it the part when archive.org copied the page for all of humanity to read, or was it the part that encouraged an entire discussion on your very words, or was it when you posted with higher karma you earned from the very same moderators you protest to artificially have your words elevated above those of others?
Talk about censorship... I browse at +2. Do I censor everyone that posts at 0 or 1?