Slashdot Mirror
Who Owns The Linux Trademark?
An anonymous reader writes "In an addendum to the recent noises by Microsoft about Linux, InformationWeek blogger Alexander Wolfe has turned up an interesting list of who owns U.S. trademarks on the word "Linux." Yes, Linus Torvalds does indeed have the trademark as far as software is concerned. But Swiss company Rosch owns "Linux" for use with laundry detergents. Interestingly, both Pogo Linux and United Linux have abandoned their trademarks (Wolfe speculates that's because of Linus's lawyers). But Finite State Machines of New Mexico owns RTLinux and Linux Networx Inc. owns "Linux Supercomputing." You can also read the full list of all 204 Linux trademarks"
There are many. many more -- this is only a list of Linux-based trademarks in the United States.
For instance, this list is the one for Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
1. What does Xenix have to do with anything?
2. Xenix was not (to my knowledge) "written for the US Government". You're probably thinking of BSD.
3. Did you copy and paste part of that from Wikipedia? I swear, your line about Microsoft licensing is exactly the same.
4. Linux was not "based on" Minix. It was always its own kernel. (Which is obvious from its monolithic rather than microkernel design.) What it lacked was a userspace, which Minix had when Linus started. So users had make use of certain Minix programs and modules to make a usable system out of Linux.
5. Linus did not "find he had created a new kernel". (Again, you seem to be confusing BSD history in there.) He was reliant on some parts of Minix until the GNU tools became available to replace the userland with something a bit more available than Tanenbaum's research OS.
6. I'm not sure where you got the "freex" idea from. Linux was always called Linux. There is nothing in the historical usenet archives (which are still available) to suggest that Linux was considering any other name.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Linux because it was too egotistical. What was the name I reserved
for any eventual release? Freax. (Get it? Freaks with the requisite
X.) In fact, some of the early make files --the files that describe
how to compile the sources-- included the word "Freax" for about
half a year. But it really didn't matter. At that point I didn't need a
name for it because I wasn't releasing it to anybody.
And Ari Lemke, who insured that it made its way to the ftp
site, hated the name Freax. He preferred the other working name I
admit that I didn't put up much of a fight. But it was his doing. So
I can honestly say I wasn't egotistical, or half-honestly say I wasn't
egotistical. But I thought okay, that's a good name, and I can
always blame somebody else for it, which I'm doing now.
-- Linus Torvalds p84 and p88 "Just for fun"