On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 10:06:17AM +0800, John wrote: > > I am assuming Matt speaks with some authority; at the least, what he > says is consistent with how I understand the Red Hat guidelines. More, > he's in a better position than you and I to clarify the matter by > checking with others in Red Hat who do know. I've worked with the trademark and licensing issue at Red hat for some time. Final authority lies with our legal council of course. I am not a lawyer, but I do my best to fully understand the current policy, discuss it with our legal council when questions like this arise, and address concerns. > > While I enjoy people who are not lawyers debating legal issues > It's not just legal, moral issues are relevant too. Red Hat's profitting > from people like you and me who've been on these lists for agesm helping > out, and at the same time seeking to prevent us from profitting from Red > Hat's contributions. Our technical contributions are fully available for you to profit from (since they're GPLed). Our brand and trademarks are not, nor can they be and retain their value and enforceability. > I presume that now Red Hat is going to scour the Internet for derived > products (of which I know there are some) and ensure that they don't > infringe Red Hat's trademarks by saying they're "based on Red Hat > Linux." This is an unfair characterization of Red Hat. We address trademark issues as they come up. We also have other issues we have to fight such as the DMCA in the USA, software patents in the USA and Europe, general Free Software/Open Source Software lobbying within various governments, etc. Cheers, Matt
