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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.'"
I've always wondered, if you've got Acrobat on your system, would Stallman want you to call it Adobe/GNU/Linux?
:P
No, he would want you to remove it immediately and install a free PDF reader instead. Or, preferably, to stop using formats like PDF altogether in favour of something that's not so tied to a particular proprietary implementation.
That aside, the point is that the average "Linux" distribution does rely on a GNU foundation in a way that it doesn't rely on X, or Gnome, or KDE, or TeX, or any of the other major software packages that people like to cite when arguing against the GNU/prefix. You can run the Linux kernel without any of those, and a lot of people do. But it's pretty difficult to get a Linux kernel at all without using the GNU compiler collection, and it's pretty unusual to use Linux without the GNU userland.
Sure, you could try to compile the kernel with Intel's compiler instead, if you only want to run it on x86. And you could replace most or all of the GNU userland with the BSD equivalents, or with another alternative such as BusyBox. But firstly, most people don't; and secondly, RMS doesn't insist that such systems be called GNU/Linux anyway. The fact is that the Linux system, in its best-known configuration - the one configuration that RMS demands people refer to as GNU/Linux - is fundamentally reliant on the work of the many collaborators in the GNU project.
It's true that "GNU/Linux" is ugly, and it's true that hardly anyone uses that name, and it's even true that RMS appears to be obsessed with this minor issue well beyond the bounds of what's reasonable. But you can't deny that he has a valid point - even if, like most people, you choose to reject the conclusion he draws from it.
A bit of MIT/LCS lore here.
RMS used to live on the 7th floor of LCS. That's where he used to have his office before he resigned in protest over the commercialization of something or another. But they let him keep his office, and he lives there, because he refuses to have an apartment. (Given the rent rates in Cambridge, the assholeness of most landlords, I don't blame him. Rather than live in my office, I chose to move to Texas, and the change in rent rates and lack of state income tax resulted in an immediate %25 pay raise. RMS doesn't have that option because we have the death penalty for people like him down here.)
Anyway, RMS has or had a number or geek chick groupies. I wouldn't call any of the ones I've seen "hot", really -- well except for this one little psycho jewish undergrad from NYC. He would sleep with them on the sofa in his office. That's why he got kicked out off floor 7, and down to the 3 floor, is that the cleaning staff complained about pulling used condoms out from behind the sofas. No joke. You can use this information for trolling if you wish, but it's all true.
RMS has a phobia of water that prevents him from showering. This is part of this post I know from first hand experience, because I myself have observed him taking a sponge bath in the 3d floor mens room in LCS. Apparently once he had a girlfriend who he was totally in love with, and she convinced him to take one shower a week. It was a traumatic experience for him each time.
RMS also has a phobia of spider plants. When RMS starts bothering a grad student and going to his office and talking to him constantly and getting him to spend all his time writing free software, the grad student will complain to someone on the floor, and they'll let them in on the secrete -- get a spider plant in your office. The next time RMS drops by, his eyes will bulge a little and he'll say " Umm. . . I wanted to talk to you about hacking some elisp code . . . why don't you stop by my office sometime ?" and make a hasty exit.
One of his more nasty habits is picking huge flakes of dandruff out of his hair while talking to you. At least he doesn't eat them, like some people I know.
Now, I know everyone loves to make fun of RMS, and I'm feeding that a bit here, so I'd just like to say that I think he really is a genius, on the order of Socrates (another filthy slob who couldn't keep a normal living arrangement, and lived in a barrel) or Ghandi or Ezekiel. Everything he has ever said to me, while sounding naive and idealistic and stupid at the time, turned out to later be correct.
The only thing I fear in his philosophy is his interest in reducing population growth. Everyone else I know of who was obsessed with that "problem" turned out to have facist or totolitarian tendencies, and I think that the problem will solve itself as more and more of the world moves into a middle class type existence.
But on everything else, bitter experiences have taught me he is right. I will not use any non-GPLd or lGPLd software, and I look forward to being able to buy only "open" hardware. I would like to see software patents completely eliminated, and with the development of digitial communication, I see no reason why shouldn't simply repeal all of Title 17 and do away with all copyrights. They just aren't needed. I expect to spend much of my life being paid to write software, and I just don't see copyrights has helping me in anyway.
Free Software / OSS should be a licensing model, not a philosophy. As a licensing model it has clear advantages and disadvantages over other licensing models.
As a philosophy it is fraught with problems, the most significant problem being the utter destruction of much of the financial incentives that exist today for people to sit down and build software. It is hypocritical to enjoy the fruits of someone's capitalist labor and then attempt to take those fruits (a form of looting) and claim some philosophical justification.
Amazing magic tricks
GNU as a trademark for computer software has been registered by the FSF for a number of years.
Imagine how many witty acronyms involing "LUG" wouldn't make sense if we changed them all to "GLUG". My personal favourite witty acronym for a Linux User Group is HUMBUG: the Home Unix Machine Brisbane User Group. Notice how they delecately try to include everyone? Theoretically you could go to a HUMBUG meeting with your Windows machine and not get snubbed, as long as you had SFU installed. Oh, and Apple geeks, they've invaded the place since OSX became the norm.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I feel he's right.
Linux may be trademarked, but it has never been enforced. Tons and tons fo people use "Linux" without any kind of permission from the trademark holder.
It was my understanding that the only reason this trademark existed is because it was recovered from some jerk who actually trademarked "Linux" as an operating system for his own nonexistant product name then tried to extort everyone.....
This is a serious question. If commercial entities are no longer allowed to use "linux"* designation, how do they let someone know what they are using. As far as I know even the distros that use original names still describe themselves as a "linux based" operating system. You can't call it "RedHat" based either or "Mandrake" based.....
Also, how does someone get a trademark on a term that has been in general use for a decade without previous trademark protection? My understanding is that this trademark would never have been granted in the US because of the lack of enforcement. There is a good reason that unprotected trademarks cannot get protection, it's becaue you end up in this type of ridiculious situation where they can now go after everyone who has been using it openly for years without so much as a peep. There is little difference between this and the submarine patents that have irked the computing community for many years. They should have used another new and unique word or combination to trademark ( "Linux certified"? ) rather than linux.
Oh, and while I'm at this rant... In the past the community decided what was acceptable for the linux name. Although they may not have had much legal "teeth" the community would quickly respond to people who misused the name or the license. Now we have one entity that is claiming all future protection for the name, it's bullshit. We now have another corporate entity that is claiming providice over our work, work that we gave openly to the community. It is wrong and I will not abide by it.
*Approved use only, what about non-approved use.
Has anyone pointed out that FSF holds the trademark to GNU ?
RMS' point was that it doesn't matter what it's called because the code's still there and improving. Microsoft could grab a copy, release it with source and call it Microsoft Rainbow. I could grab a copy and call it the Shieldwolf System. That's the strength of all that GPL software, and the quality of all the software is the source of the GPL's strength. He probably doesn't like seeing resources diverted to defending a trademark when they could be, in his opinion, better used in some other way. Which is a fair enough point of view.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
And yet it was the Linux kernel that put the rest of the GNU software on the map. Given that the GNU folks are too incompitent to write a decent kernel to run the rest of their stuff, I think Linus and his crew should get more credit than the "volume of code" measurement implies.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Linux is a kernel, right?
;-)
When did Linux become the operating system?
I must have missed something, or was it just mass media brain washing that has caught on? But last time I looked, when I installed something like SuSE, Red Hat, or Debian, it was an operating system built on open source tools, which compirsed of the linux "kernel", some variant of the unix file system, a whole suit of gnu replacements for unix commands, and a range of open source packages from folk like Apache and such?
If we were to talk about perhaps Solaris, then indeed, we are talking about the Solaris kernel, the Solaris operating system tools which were all written from scratch, alebit with access to the source from BSD and SYS V variants, and agian a unix file system and some packages from folk like Apache and such, but in this case it's a complete solution from Sun and it's called Solaris.
The same can be said surely for the likes of OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, where they are complete systems, built around kernels, from scratch, although in each case they too lean heavity on the GNU replacements for Unix commands and tools.
Windows for example once refered to itself as Windows NT, where the NT part was essentially the kernel, designed and built by some smart folk who had a hand in the likes of OS/2 and VMS kernels and operating systems if I recall corrently, but it was clear that Windows was the GUI and NT was the underlying kernel.
Mac OS X even now is pretty open about the split between it's Mach kernel, Darwin core, and BSD / NeXT Step tools, but we don't call Mac OS X "Mach" do we - nope, it's OS X, or if you're like me and you favour what uname -a tells you, it's Darwin
I think Stallman summed it up pretty well when he ended the piece with:
quote:
Stallman thinks the issue of naming the product is not so clear cut. "Most of the time, when people call something 'Linux', it's the GNU system with Linux as the kernel. Maybe this policy will encourage people to call it GNU," Stallman told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I prefer to say GNU/Linux' so as to give the kernel's developer a share of the credit."
Now I do agree that GNU/Linux is perhaps a mouthfull, but on the other hand, I think it's particularly lame to refer to the GNU/Linux operating system as just Linux, so perhaps it's time for a new name, label, whatever, for whatever it is many of us run.
It could be like the Musician formerly known as Prince, now known as some Egyptian hyrogliph - we could have the operating system formerly known as Linux, now known as #$%^&#!?
It might actually be worth many of you taking time to read Stallman's FAQ on GNU/Linux over at:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html
It does go a long way to answering and clearing up much of what is in this horribly messy series of threads and sub threads, basically emotive and guess work, rather than fact.
For example, from that URL:
quote:
Why do you call it GNU/Linux and not Linux?
Most operating system distributions based on Linux as kernel are basically modified versions of the GNU operating system. We began developing GNU in 1984, years before Linus Torvalds started to write his kernel, and we developed a larger part of the resulting system than any other project. In fairness, we ought to get equal mention.
quote:
Why is the name important?
Although the developers of Linux, the kernel, are contributing to the free software community, many of them do not care about freedom. People who think the whole system is Linux tend to get confused and assign to those developers a role in the history of our community which they did not actually play. Then they give inordinate weight to those developers' views.
Calling the system GNU/Linux recognizes the role that our idealism played in building our community, and helps the public recognize the practical importance of these ideals.
quote:
--- Dez Blanchfield http://WebSearch.COM.AU "Will work for bandwidth.."
RMS thinks that certain libraries (such as readline) should be GPL so that developers who want to use the libraries are forced to GPL their software. He believes that if there are enough good GPL libraries, it will be an incentive for developers to write GPL software (so they can use those libraries). Actually, in the specific case of readline, it's probably because readline was extracted from bash (which is GPL) and it was easier to release it under the same license than to track down all the original authors (copyright holders) and get their permission to use a different license.
chown -R us ~you/base
Yeah, but here's the point I've tried to make:
GNU is a retarted word.
If you say "Linux", 1.) Everyone has some idea what you mean, or at least everyone who's used a computer a moderate amount and watches CNN; and 2.) if someone asks you "What's Linux mean?", you can say, "Well, it's an operating system, written by this guy named 'Linus', hence 'Linux', because it was intended to be like Unix, but free."
If you say "GNU/Linux", and someone asks you "What's GNU", or if they know a bit about linux, maybe, "Is GNU a distribution?", you have to explain to them that "GNU means 'GNU's Not Unix', and you watch as their eyes roll back in their head because 1.) Recursive acronyms are not funny, they're not cool, they're grammatically incorrect and retarted, and 2.) the person you're talking to now feels like, rather than some professional product, the whole thing is some dumb fucking nerd's toy project, such that they can name it with an in-joke.
Here's a quote from RMS:
This is the WHOLE fucking problem with the adoption of Linux: Elitist pendantic assholes with nothing better to do than pound their head against the wall until everyone else catches on to their rhythm.
Calling it "GNU/Linux" does not take away the ambiguity of it; it only adds to the confusion. Why do you think it's not "Explorer/WindowsNT", or "Darwin/BSD"? Because that's just more confusing. Plus, as much as RMS Keeps up with the whole line of arguing "Linux is just the kernel, the OS is almost entirely GNU", the fact remains that Linux is the OS, and before Linux came along, GNU at best was a set of solutions looking for a problem. Hell, they've been trying to write their kernel for 15 years, and it still doesn't even have a competent memory management system; Linus used the GNU tools so that he could save time and not write his own - I'm sure that, at this point, had he known all the bullshit that RMS would cause, he would have just written his own compiler, or used borland's, or whatever.
While I appreciate some things that RMS has done, he's done, in my eyes, an equal amount to divide the linux movement. The whole idea of "if you don't like it, fork it" may sound good to a filthy hippy, but in reality, having 29831 implementations of everything, with 289 different licences, is really just hurting the community. "Should I use Xfree86 or X.org?" Depends on these couple of licencing issues. "What about nano v. pico?" Licencing issues.
Too many cooks in the kitchen; too many elitist programmers who's way of doing it is the only acceptable way. Thank god Linus is the figurehead of Linux, because he's levelheaded and pragmatic.
~W
sig?
on the one hand you say:
"RMS...is constantly trashing other people's efforts"
then on the other you say:
" Lots of people who develop software don't know much of anything about copyright or licencing issues. Plenty of them pick GPL because they have the impression that open souce means GPL. Everyone else uses it, it must be good, right?"
So you are trashing other people's choices yourself. I could just as well argue that the BSDs are "cool" now because linux has become too popular and that's why you choose it. And no doubt there ARE people who chose the GPL because it is popular or some of the people who use the BSDs do it to be "niche". But the simple fact of the matter is you can't speak for the vast majority of people who choose the GPL licence and I can't speak for most BSD ppl.
You don't have a survey, you only have anecdotal evidence from fanboys, not the actual devs. You don't know the actual reasons they chose it, so you can STFU you stupid CUNT. Go do some research you whinging bitch, come back when you have some figures. Until then, shut your whinging bitch yap, and dont' say another word you stupid fucktard.
> RMS shouldn't be blamed for encouraging people to say GNU/Linux
RMS defenders always like to put the soft-spin on this thing. The fact is that RMS isn't just encouraging people to say "GNU/Linux", he is actively boycotting anyone who does not.
Of course, Stallman is just denying himself many outlets for his message. Problem is, there's a lot of people who believe in RMS's ideals and would like to give him the opportunity to preach them. But he's too busy telling them to buzz off because they're a "LUG" and not a "GLUG" or whatever. So, rather than the Prophet of Free Software, he comes off as an embittered crank to the very people who hold him in esteem.
> Wanting people to put GNU into the name of Linux is not trying to remember RMS. It's remembering GNU.
Other than Stallman, is there any GNU programmer with any prominence whatsoever? He's always been the undisputed Dear Leader of the GNU project.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
> His point is that 22% of the code in a typical
> "Linux" distribution is written by the GNU
Did you know, that the Mozilla source is 30 times larger than the Apache web-servers, 20 times as large as the Java 1.0 JDK/JRE sources, 5 times bigger than the standard Perl distribution, twice as big as the Linux kernel source and nearly as large as the GNOME 2.0 source, even, when 150 standard applications are included with it ?
Do we need to call Linux distributions, that come with Mozilla Mozilla/Linux now ?
What is GNU for you ? GPL'd code or binutils, gcc and the dev stuff, needed for Linux development ?
If there would not have been Linus Torvalds' plaything, the kernel, then Mr. Stallman would be no more than a long haired, full bearded freak, that hasn't seen more of corporate space than the parking lot in front of such a company, walking around with a shield on his shoulders:
"Free the Software (/and/ the Whales) !"
But let's be serious about it: GNU made it with Linux. And Linux made it with GNU.
Linux, however is GPL'd but not GNU.
And while the sole fact, that without GNU Linux might not exist, is true, it is even more true, that not third a people would need to consider the GPL and OpenSource today, if there would not be Linux.
Linux did much more for GNU than GNU did for Linux. Heck, Stallman even is against certain policies and very unhappy with Linux. His brain-child got carried on the Linux horse right
into IBM and Novell, but he just can't admit, that this is LINUX that made it there, not GNU.
"GNU is not Linux." (if you get the hint)
(and Emacs ain't Linux either.)
As of publicity for GNU and OpenSource: Without Linux it would be nowhere. So, let the world call it what it deserves: Linux. Let the Geeks value and argument, whether GNU needs to be named or not. I, for sure, don't. That GNU/Linux thing just reminds me on some semantic crap the feminists over in Germany tried to do with language.
Something like Wo/man is a "man" also (or fe/male), it needs to be named something else. Yack!
Yeah right. Because every single political activist out there is just thinking about my own good. Not about their own political agendas with nothing to do with "good" or "evil", as they're just political agendas.
The best way to care about other people is by doing (meaning: not whining about what you people think should do) good to them and allowing them to choose if they're going to be affected by what you're doing. I think it's useless wanting to bring better "moral standards" (software-related ones, energy-related, nature-related, etc. etc.) to the world when you try to defend your cause with lies, half-truths and violence.
My point is: I don't want open source laws, forced open source government adoption, and I certainly don't want anyone caring about my "freedom" while making decisions about what's "best for me". So NO, Stallman's beliefs are not about freedom, the children, or anything like they. Stallman's belief's are just his beliefs. It's just his opinions about what he thinks how we all should act.
His software contributions are wonderfull and are a really good base for a lot of computer enthusiasts. However, thinking that they're the solution or the only real "moral" future to the world, is just political nonsense from the same people believing that he is fighting for our "freedom" and not just to force his ideas down our throats.
So enough with the "think of the children" talk.
I find that a lot of the time where people are saying 'Linux' they mean to say (or at least should be saying) 'Open Source'. After all, Linux (as in the kernel itself) really is a small part of the whole system, and as and end user I'm not going to care whether my Gnome desktop, Firefox browser and OpenOffice.org productivity suite are running on a Linux, BSD or even OpenSolaris kernel!
I wonder about the utility of trademarking the term Linux - in reality rejecting a license application is going to be difficult at best, and to do so will go against the spirit of open source in general. My use of the term Linux is not necessarily going to appeal to everyone, and vice versa, but that shouldn't result in an application being denied; consider SpamLinux, PornSurfingLinux, BibleBashingLinux, etc.
All the +4 and +5 scored posts are all about GNU/Linux being the one true name but none refuting this claim have been modded up. I sense bias again?
I guess the previous poster is right and we should call Linux, KLinux because without KDE Linux would be a totally different operating system from the user's view. It makes up most of any modern Linux distribution. Right?
I dont understand the logic?
If 22% of the system is licensed under a GNU license but most is not offically part of "gnu" then is it really a 100% pure GNU system?
The gnu license requires all of the source code to be gnu before anything is called gnu. To me this means unless its purely gnu/linux than its Linux.
BSD is doing fine without gnu with the exception of the gcc of course. There have been free c/c++ compilers in the past but most of them have died out due to gcc's popularity.
But Linux would not have existed without GNU right? Yes I think it would
BSD and yes Linux could have easily existed without gnu. Posix is still huge and just as functional and other FOSS c compilers would have gained popularity without gnu which Linux would have used.
GNU is not the reason Linux existed since free software has been around since the 1970's. Most of it BSD and Posix. This is from a former FreeBSD user so I look at gnu a little bit differently.
BSD has been opensourced for a long time before GNU.
http://saveie6.com/
Apparently Stallman only says GNU Linux. I think Leo Laporte invited him to be on TWiT podcast. He insisted that everyone only say GNU/Linux or he wouldn't come. I believe after that requirement, the TWiT crew cancelled their invitation.
Stallman also made of fool of himself on Leo's old show, "The Screen Savers" on TechTV before it was raped by G4. Apparently, Stallman forced everyone to say GNU/Linux, so Leo got his revenge by having Stallman sing the Free Software Foundation ditty. Although Stallman didn't see the humor in it, the viewers sure did.