I understand your desire to succeed as a small business, but remember Trademark law is used to protect the investment a company has made in a name. For instance, xerox has spent a lot of money to have people think of xerox when they they of copiers. As you said, when people look for a brand name they are often looking for a class of products, and as a business you want them to only think of yours.
You are correct that it is legal to use a trademark for comparison purposes, but then your google ad link should link to a page with the comparison and not the homepage.
Further, non-targeted non-paid results are not under target. They do work as desired, finding all things relavant to xerox (or geico). But paying for an ad link that vaugely looks like a link to a Geico page, and then sent customers your site is much different.
Why not create a kernel module that wraps the current API into some stable API? Instead of each vendor trying to do this (NVIDIA, etc.) you could create one standard that could be shared by all. Certianly you might have trouble getting it into the mainstream kernel, as Linus will oppose it.
Maybe I'm confused. But isn't the LGPL license designed to allow proprietary code to link into a "single GPL'd function" without forcing the developer to give away all his proprietary code?
Now...I understand that maybe the code you want is under the GPL, well then you are correct. Maybe you can convience the orignal developer to release it to you under LGPL for a small fee? Wha la.
So they won't do that. Fine. If you are making money off your software you should have the resources to either buy code from someone else or make it yourself.
But you are right in the end. The GPL is restrictive, in favor of the original developers. I'll take that any day before I allow someone to simply use my code without prejudice.
I believe the GPL is briliant in one respect. If you want to use it in proprietary software, you can pay the original copyright holders to give you a different license, thereby giving commericalism!! (yes, yes, I know it may be hard to get all the copyright holders in certian projects to agree). However, if you would prefer to save your money all you have to do is contribute back by releasing your software under GPL, communism!!
Of course, I may just be speaking out of the wrong hole. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not guaranting that I know the finer points of the GPL. Just MHO from the perspective of a user and developer.
~Michael
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I understand your desire to succeed as a small business, but remember Trademark law is used to protect the investment a company has made in a name. For instance, xerox has spent a lot of money to have people think of xerox when they they of copiers. As you said, when people look for a brand name they are often looking for a class of products, and as a business you want them to only think of yours.
You are correct that it is legal to use a trademark for comparison purposes, but then your google ad link should link to a page with the comparison and not the homepage.
Further, non-targeted non-paid results are not under target. They do work as desired, finding all things relavant to xerox (or geico). But paying for an ad link that vaugely looks like a link to a Geico page, and then sent customers your site is much different.
Why not create a kernel module that wraps the current API into some stable API? Instead of each vendor trying to do this (NVIDIA, etc.) you could create one standard that could be shared by all. Certianly you might have trouble getting it into the mainstream kernel, as Linus will oppose it.
Maybe I'm confused. But isn't the LGPL license designed to allow proprietary code to link into a "single GPL'd function" without forcing the developer to give away all his proprietary code? Now...I understand that maybe the code you want is under the GPL, well then you are correct. Maybe you can convience the orignal developer to release it to you under LGPL for a small fee? Wha la. So they won't do that. Fine. If you are making money off your software you should have the resources to either buy code from someone else or make it yourself. But you are right in the end. The GPL is restrictive, in favor of the original developers. I'll take that any day before I allow someone to simply use my code without prejudice. I believe the GPL is briliant in one respect. If you want to use it in proprietary software, you can pay the original copyright holders to give you a different license, thereby giving commericalism!! (yes, yes, I know it may be hard to get all the copyright holders in certian projects to agree). However, if you would prefer to save your money all you have to do is contribute back by releasing your software under GPL, communism!! Of course, I may just be speaking out of the wrong hole. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not guaranting that I know the finer points of the GPL. Just MHO from the perspective of a user and developer. ~Michael