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Red Hat Tightening Trademarks?
Sands says that, according to Amazon.com, Red Hat no longer allows their trademarked "Red Hat" name to be used on any product other than their official boxed "Red Hat Linux" sets.
Amazon.com spokesperson Sharon Greenspan says, "Right now we're looking into a possible Intellectual Property violation involving Red Hat Linux software. We are talking to Red Hat and the sellers of such products." Sharon says she'll call Slashdot as soon as knows more; she seemed as surprised by this news as was everyone else.
A well-known Linux products vendor has confirmed to me personally, off the record, that yes, Red Hat is trying to keep outsiders from using the "Red Hat" name when selling anything other than official Red Hat boxed sets, and that Red Hat no longer wants their trademark used on GPLed or repackaged versions or their products.
Red Hat itself cannot comment on this story at this time. They are in a legally mandated "quiet period" following their recent IPO, which does not end until September 6th. Meanwhile, if you have more information about this matter, please psot it below or e-mail me privately: roblimo@nOsPaMslashdot.rg
"Official Red Hat" is what they don't let you use, along with the shadowman logo.
Their name (i.e., their reputation) is their
only asset. Unless they want to verify that
every clone CD is a byte-for-byte copy of their
official CD, the only way for RH to protect
their reputation from others' carelessness is to
insist that only Red Hat, Inc., can use the
name "Red Hat"... which is the whole point
of trademark law, after all.
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
He just said Debian gives away the CD masters totally free of charge and royalty. They're just trying to avoid confusing the general public and ensuring quality control by keeping people from labelling 2nd-hand copies as "official" copies.
What does any of this remotely have to do with free vs non-free software?
So you're saying you ARE redistributing MetroX on your CD's?
You know, not everything in the Official RedHat box set is GPL'd software...
Dang. I was actually looking forward to:
(a) Red Hat being able to distinguish their product from marketplace lookalikes (i.e. the MacMillan boxed set and the like, and
(b) free distro's called "Blue Hat" (from IBM, of course), "Gnu Hat" (from Linux Central or Linux Mall), "Old Hat" (archives), etc., etc. Humor is an excellent marketing tool.
I think not...(*poof*)
So why the "Linux Powered" logo on your NT-hosted web site? Hypocrite.
From what I've heard, that "support" entails telling customers to call Red Hat's tech support. Very low, since Red Hat can't support customers of a repackaged Red Hat (and rightfully so, since the repackaging gives Red Hat absolutely zilch income).
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
I didn't see prices or support info on your site - the pages were gone (404). Since you have the details.. are you Robb? Just curious. If your support is good, then yeah - it's a deal.
Now, if MacMillan (or whoever) sells a box that says "Red Hat", a lot of people will be fooled. They'll call Red Hat and get (gasp) turned down because it's not really Red Hat(tm) Linux. That will make them mad, they'll think "Red Hat has bad service!"
"Red Hat" *is* their trademark, and I guess they have the right to control it. I understand their concern over consumer confusion (assuming that's what it's all about.) People will still be able to sell copies of their distro, but they can't say that it's Red Hat because "Red Hat" means more than a CD - it's the infrastructure they're trying to build that supports the distro.
When it boils down to it, no one really has the right to call their distro "Red Hat" except for Red Hat. I'm interested to see what happens to distros that say "based on Red Hat...."
Hey, great plan. That way Alan Cox will have to go look for another job and quit hacking the kernel full time. :/
To Duncan: I agree with you. I do like when the original story is not later edited without any indication that it was edited. I think the Update additions are best and necessary.
Since I standing on my soap box, I would like to add the following comment. The one thing great about /. is that breaking news is sometimes posted without the requisite follow-up research that other news sources usually conduct. As we are all aware of, many times the initial story and /. posting contains misleading information. Eventually, however, the various responses and comments lead to the "true" story. Remember the 1st principle of OSS; many ppl looking at the code is better than a close source of information. The reason why /. works is because many ppl looking at a story eventually leads to the better version of the truth.
Except when it comes to anything to do with Apple.:-)
It was really good to see that a little background work was done before the posting of this story. After all, this is probably going to turn out to be a very unpopular move, and RedHat already bears the burden of being the "Microsoft of Linux." Not that I think that they deserve such a title, but it has been said.
All in all, though, this is a perfectly understandable move. Robert Young has frequently compared selling Linux to selling ketchup -- the differentiation comes with the brand name. Now that RedHat is becoming successful, that brand name is the biggest asset they've got. It is natural to protect it.
Probably some people will blow their top about this, but I really don't think that it is a big deal. My guess is that their distro will continue to be downloadable, albeit without the name, and that RedHat(c) compatible distros will become all the rage.
Any votes on names? I like different types of hats (Red Derby, Top Hat, etc).
As of this posting, the Red Hat trademark story is still at LWN, and it says nothing about "Official" -- it refers only to the term "Red Hat."
Just in case there's anyone else out there who may have forgotten what a scroll bar is for, I'll quote from the LWN story (yes, I chopped some out -- I'm quoting, not copying, okay?):
One possible outcome may be that RH will realize that it needs the services of an attorney who can do a little better than to issue a "verbal warning" and then leave on vacation. If indeed he did so, as we know nothing about this other than what Amazon has claimed. Or it may turn out that somebody at Amazon hit the panic button. Or it may turn out that RH is indeed tightening up on unauthorized use of its trademark.
Until we have it in writing from RH, it's nothing but a game of corporate Humour Rumour.
Now un-knot yer undies and get some sleep.
--Z.
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Yah, so all of those linux coder types who they highered just so they can work on linux full time will have to go find other jobs and only work on linux in their free time. I'm sure that will be good for linux in general. And for the trademark: who cares? It's their trademark, it's their logo, they own it. If you wanna sell something redhat put money into and give them nothing in return, fine, but call it "Dirty Linux" or something along those lines, that's 100% legal.
-matt
Please show me where that email says that redhat initiated this? For all we know amazon is just trying to cover it's own ass just incase redhat's lawyers get bored. Or maybe a customer complained. Or maybe aliens took over their brains and forced them to dance around. All we know is that amazon asked someone to stop using redhat's trademarks, which IMHO is NOT a bad thing. Besides redhat denies all of this, and unlike some of the more conspiricy minded, I believe them.
-matt
Yah because RedHat is evil, because they're making money off of Linux and contributing some of that money back to the community. Imagine the nerve of them, highering people like Alan Cox to work on Linux full time. I mean, what do they think that will do to the kernel if Alan gets to spend his entire work day maintaining the stable kernel, and working on the other projects he's involved in. Sheesh! And the money they put into gnome, we didn't need that. Real coders just eat("/dev/food"); they don't need actual nurishment(sp).
Yarg, stupid trolls. I know a lot of you hate RedHat because they're the "Microsoft of Linux" but what specifically have they done that's so bad? So many people just hate them because they're becoming big, it's probally the same reason you hate microsoft, and gap clothes. It's just being anti-trendy trendy. Saying, "I hate that just because it's popular," is no better (worse imho) than saying, "I love that just because it's popular." Hate RedHat because you don't like their actual bussiness practices (not some rumor started by a guy who went off on a polite request from amazon), hate them because you think their distro is buggy and low quality. I personally have 3 redhat boxes at home, my router runs redhat 5.1, and has never had any problems, my desktop runs 5.2 and only has problems with X crashing, but that's because the X server isn't 100% stable and wasn't provided by redhat anyway. My laptop runs 6.0, and I'm considering putting debian on it just because i wanna try it out. I have yet to have a problem with any of these boxes though. The only time the router goes down is when we lose power, or if i just turn it off during a thunder storm.
-matt
You're talking about the http://www.bestlinux.tf/ site? Yeah, it's... interesting.
.tf is? And why he's hosting his site there?
Hmmm... I wonder where
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Oops. Sorry about that last sentence. I know I'm tired, but I didn't know it was that bad. It looks like I was multiprocessing and had a thread jump tracks (to add mixed metaphor to my other crimes).
Oh, well, it's a good sign of mumblemumble. Figure it out for yourself, or maybe I'll get back to you tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I'll try to divert attention from my own shortcomings by calling attention to Rob's hilariously tautological disclaimer, which is actually semi-relevant to this thread: All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Keep in mind that it was Amazon that told him not to use the trademark, not Red Hat. Note specifically the following statement:
Of course the legal counsel rep, and only person in the entire Red Hat organization who can respond, David Shumannfang, is currently on vacation and won't be available for a week (9-7-99). Basically we are all screwed and no one at Red Hat knows anything until his return, just lovely.
Looks like someone at Amazon was covering their own butt, and this dude overreacted and started blaming anyone and everyone within arms reach.
I think we need to not pull out the flamethrowers just yet.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
In a forum like /. I agree with an earlier poster who urged that developments be added as UPDATES to the initial report (as you sometimes do), so that early comments remain in context. Of course you run a greater risk of the initial report making you look silly, but most of us are grownups here and ought to understand how these things can happen.
I also applaud /. for checking these things out yourselves before running them, as with the 911-on-Linux story the other day. A true "news" site needs to do basic bullshit-detection to retain credibility. The nearly instantaneous feedback on /. adds an entirely new dimension but the better comments serve a journalistic purpose too -- to find the truth. (I don't mean to sound religious about this, and I'm not saying journalism is perfect, but at least in theory that's what it's supposed to be about.)
Now that /. is owned by a company with actual money, any thought to hiring "real" journalists, who know how to do quick detective work?
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
And I wound up having to figure out on my own that the reason the installation kept failing was because the CD-ROM (which I came to suspect CompUSA had taken in as a return and put into a box that it re-shrinkwrapped) had schmutz on it.
I used to be a 95 lb. weakling.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
Ok, that's very nice but it only confirms that Amazon is asking people not to use someone else's trademark. You might infer that RedHat is behind this somehow and you might be right, but this doesn't prove that. Even if RedHat had dropped a dime to Amazon about this (I kinda doubt it) they probably did it for the right reasons.
This doesn't look heavy handed or draconian to me. I don't see any threat of legal action. I see a request. Seems reasonable to me.
Amazon doesn't want to have to run on the bad side of either RedHat or its customers that might buy an un-official RedHat Linux CD without understanding what that means. What harm comes to a seller of these discs that has to sell them as 'Linux' vs 'RedHat Linux'?
linux.com has pulled that story.
"Red Hat has informed
LWN that the
information was not
correct, and that Mr.
Sands has not talked to
their legal department."
It's close enough you know what you're talking about and far enough away to convey that there may be divergence, the buyer should beware, and that it's the sellers, not Red Hat's, fault if there's something wrong.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What if we call it the symbol '$' ? Or The Linux distribution formerly known as RedHat..
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
http://lwn.net/daily/sands.html
Look at the note at the top of the form...
According to linux.com, Redhat has repudiated this story.
Sigh.
-- Slashdot sucks.
They don't want to alienate us too much- it could cost them everything . And, as it was put earlier, what in the hell do they propose that we call the distribution, pray tell?
This is not looking good folks. Guess we're going to find out how much Red Hat's going to push things- and how hard we're going to push back...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
OK, I've seen the bogosity reports, but I thought I'd chip in anyway.
Red Hat (and Linus) must protect their trademarks to some extent. IANAL, but I understand that failure to protect a trademark can result in losing it. It's a shame that Disney has to go around suing daycare centers about the use of a certain mouse's name, but that's just the way it works under some countries' legal systems.
As for the hoax, that (along with the nasty business about the kernel list a couple of weeks back) just goes to show that Linux (TM) really is making inroads into areas that someone else thought they already had a claim on, and is therefore provoking an immune response. It's a rude nuisance, and I'm not aware that even the most undisciplined Linux advocate has been pulling stunts of such low calibre, but in the big picture it's a good sign that want to see quality software everywhere.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Legally, this is not copyright law; this is trademark law. The GPL doesn't cover this. Red Hat owns the Red Hat name, and it is worth millions of dollars to them. This restriction doesn't effect the software, unless they require that you remove all Red Hat notifications before you ship it (in which case, they are breaking the GPL).
Morally, it makes a lot of sense. If I start my own Red Hat derivative distro (say, mirror their FTP site or pretty much copy the CDs), I have every right to copy and redistribute the software (due to GPL), but no right to any of Red Hat's marketing power. If I say that I have El Cheapo Red Hat disks, I am skimming off of Red Hat's marketing investments, while eating some of their business. That just ain't fittin'.
Worse, what if I derive my own distro from Red Hat? Again, I have every right to do so and to distribute it, but no right to call it Red Hat. After all, I could have easily broken the kernel or whatever with my "improvements". The last thing Red Hat needs are my bugs being attached to their name and destroying their credibility.
That being said, it would make sense to say that a distro was derived from Red Hat n.m. But if Red Hat isn't shipping it, it's not Red Hat. It's Linux.
BTW, isn't this the same board that complains that people equate the names "Red Hat" and "Linux"? Reigning in the Red Hat name makes it harder to forget that there are other distros out there. Accuse Red Hat of one evil or the other, but not both: even a pendulum can't swing both ways at the same time.
--The basis of all love is respect
Personally I like the idea. My girl friend bought me Red Hat 6.0 as a gift, but it turned out to be one of those over priced nock off versions..
I was even confused looking at the package and ended up returning it to the store for the "Official" version.
(Yes I know they are the same, but it's kind of nice to support the company...)
I just hope they don't try to ban someone saying "Based on Red Hat Linux..."
If this is the case, then the name of the distribution is no longer "Red Hat." Theoretically, this would mean that Red Hat should start calling its own official boxed set the "Official Red Hat version of the Blah GNU/Linux system," while all others would be merely the Blah GNU/Linux system. As it stands now, they've given everybody the impression that "Red Hat" is the name of the GPL'd, freely redistributable distribution, not the name of their particular boxing of it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
RedHat is doing the right thing. They've got to protect a number of things: 1) Their trademark, 2) their reputation, 3) stockholder value and 4) their customers. The trademark is a pretty obvious thing, you can't go and start your own distribution and call it RedHat no more than Microsoft can suddenly decide to change the name of their operating system to Linux.
In this case I'm assuming that somebody burned a RedHat 6.X tree. If this is the case from a trademark standpoint they still can't call it the RedHat distribution or at least they've got to be careful that it can't be misconstrued that its the "Official RedHat 6.0" because its not.
RedHat also provides additional services beyond just the actual Linux installation, namely some level of support. The customer needs to know that what they're buying is the real deal and is supported and so on.
These cheap distributions provide a service to customers as long as the customer actually knows what they're getting. I bought a stack of distributions from Cheap*Bytes and I knew I was just getting a dump of a distribution and not the actual distribution.
I'm not saying RedHat is selflessly thinking of only the customers interests. If they don't do this then customers will get upset which isn't good for the companies finances.
I can tell you exaclty why they are doing this:
Confusion in the marketplace.
People go out and they buy this product called RedHat Linux so the expect support from RedHat. Unfortuately, most of these people are not buying Official RedHat Linux that comes with support. When they find out that they can't get support, it goes something like this:
Cust: I bought RedHat Linux, your product, why don't you support me!?
RH: You didn't buy our official product, you bought the free version.
Cust: But I paid $10 for it... it wasn't free.
RH: Yes, but that money was not for purchasing an Official RedHat license.
At this point the customer either becomes irate and vows never to run Linux (especially RedHat) again or they figure it out. Keep in mind that most people are idiots and cannot figure this out.
Then Red Hat _might_ make a move to make people qualify thier products as "unoffical Red Hat" which is clearly distinguishing them from the rest of Linux.
Now, after Red Hat makes an effort to make it clear to even clueless newbies that they are mearly _one_ of the distributions of Linux, and that "Offical Red Hat" is diffrent from "Unoffical Red Hat," people are whining again.
I'm starting to think the SlashDot/Linux community just won't be happy with _anything_ Red Hat does now.
This is a great move for them, and for Debian, and for Slackware. They are doing thier best to make it clear that they are a _distribution_ of linux, and that doesn't meant that Linux = Red Hat. They are makeing it clear that "we will allow you to copy and redistribute, to a point, but don't do something that will make users expect to get tech support from us if they buy a copied version from you."
Seems like some of you are reacting to this like you expect Red Hat to provide phone support to every user in the Universe. Worse yet, some are actually starting to say that they shouldn't have the right to regulate the use of thier name. If you say Red Hat can't regulate the use of thier product name, how would you like it if they turned the tables on you, and said the same about the use of the word "Linux" itself, and said "Red Hat _IS_ Linux" ... you wouldn't have a leg to stand on if you told them how they can and can't use thier own name.
Lighten up, this is an issue of a series of schmucks selling $2 CD's in online auctions trying to get $70+ (More than the price of the offical version), and leaving clueless bidders believeing they will get support (which they won't). Red Hat is not only protecting itself, they are protecting Linux by keeping people from getting angry and disappointed during thier first experiance with Linux.
This policy originated after too many manufacturers made non-bootable or otherwise messed up versions of Debian. By allowing them to say they were distributing the official CD, we gave them an incentive to use the one we mastered, which had more quality control behind it.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Look at the situation - we have:
A company which has made great alliances with hardware companies, opening up specs to Linux developers early on. (Remember how Linux beat MS on the Merced?)
A company which *PAYS* some of the best hackers in the world to make Linux better.
A company which seems to fully support the LSB.
A company which releases every bit of code under the GPL.
A company that lets their software proliferate around the world, for free.
Their name is Red Hat. And the only thing that seems to be different from yesterday is that people who aren't Red Hat can't call their product Red Hat. How is this going to affect Linux in any tangible way?
When I bought a boxed copy of the distribution last year, I got fooled by MacMillan's repackaging and bought that instead of the official RH boxed set. Some people might buy a computer with "Red Hat Linux pre-installed" and not realize they're not getting the same support as someone who buys a boxed copy. As long as Red Hat still allows CheapBytes, MacMillan, et al to say they're "copies of" RH (or some other such language), I don't see a problem with them cracking down a little.
Just look at his site. He's obviously trying to take advantage of folks that don't know Red Hat this from Red Hat that. To the point of *auctioning* off the CDs that cost him, what, 85 cents for media? And cloaking his product self-righteously in "RedHat GPL" ticks me off, too. What he's doing has very very little to do with the GPL, and quite a lot to do with "profiteering".
[