On Mon, Dec 23, 2002 at 06:32:58AM +0800, John wrote: > > I know about Cheapbytes, I have their Hurricane CD. I also have > unregistered official RHL packages before and after. I also know Red Hat > has to defend its trademarks or lose them. > > What Cheapbytes did is precisely what the GPL guarantees Cheapbytes can > do. While the GPL gives you the right to redistribute, modify, and redistribute modified components of software that are in our products, it gives no trademark license whatsoever. > I wish to make a business of supporting Linux. From what I see, if I do > that wrt Red Hat Linux I risk discussing the matter in court unless I > include official RHL packages for every client, and that becomes like > selling Windows. My clients would be paying for something they don't > want. If your client wants Red Hat Linux then you should obtain and provide them a full boxed set. If your customers are asking for Red Hat Linux then clearly there is some value there. If they don't care about Red Hat Linux, by all means provide for them some stuff you downloaded for free from the Internet and burned on a CD-R. But since that stuff isn't coming from us, you can't sell it as "Red Hat Linux". Let met get to the definition of Trademark: A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. Let me also say that the requirements we place on persons or organizations who reproduce and distribute the software we place on our web site is no different than that of many other groups. For example, the Apache license: http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt 4. The names "Apache" and "Apache Software Foundation" must not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without prior written permission. For written permission, please contact apache@xxxxxxxxxxx This kind of restriction and request is common in lots of Free Software. Make any more sense? Cheers, Matt
