John said: > I think Red Hat's gone too far; I think they've done their best to strike the right balance. In contrast, they could go the same route as SuSE, LindowsOS, and Xandros and have a distribution that cannot be freely distributed. The route they've chosen is clearly the lesser of two evils. > I wish to make a business of supporting Linux. Sounds like you wish to make a business of selling Redhat Linux CD's and you don't like that you can't call it Redhat linux. I come to this conclusion because otherwise you'd be completely in the clear regarding their trademarks. If that is the case, then there's no way around their rules. > My clients would be paying for something they don't want. Well pick another distribution. That's the beauty of Linux. You're not bound to one vendor. Or take Redhat Linux, strip the logos and Redhat trademarks and call it whatever you want, just like Mandrake did. Or you could always support any derivation of the BSD's instead. Nothing about their copyright keeps you from doing whatever you want with it. > In contrast, Debian has (at least) one logo for official Debian products > (which includes CDs created from official images downloaded from Debian > download sites and their mirrors) and another for derived products such > as Gibraltar. That's not a bad idea, but then again Debian isn't a for-profit company. -- Brian
