On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Matt Wilson wrote: I have been asking people to not send me copies off-list. I'm on the list, I do not *need* two copies. > On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 09:49:07AM +0800, John wrote: > > > > That's analogous to building from source. it's not what I'm discussing. > > If, otoh, Burger King actually buys McDonald's product for resale then > > it should be able to represent it as such. > > And if you /purchase/ Red Hat Linux from us, you can resell it as > such. That's not what gives reason to the confusion. > > > > On the Boston Marathon, you can not create athletic gear with the > > > Boston Marathon logo and sell it. Likewise you can not use the Red > > > Hat logos to sell things without a trademark license. > > > > The point is that I have a package created by the original manufacturer. > > What RH is seeking to do is correctly identifying that what I have is an > > exact copy of Red Hat linux. I see some difficuly explaining that "These > > CDs I have on offer contain Red Hat Linux" at PLUG and that those same > > CDs "do not contain Red Hat Linux" at my office. > > > > Or that they only contain Red Hat Linux only if I don't (give them to you, or > > sell them to you "for a nominal fee."). > > > > > > It's doing it in a discriminatory fashion because some organisations can > > do exactly the same thing without any legal problems and without payment > > of any fee to Red Hat. > > I can understand how this can be very confusing if you don't have a > good understanding of US and international trademark law. Any use of > our trademarks (including, but not limited to): usage which might > cause confusion in the marketplace, or which might imply an > association, sponsorship, or approval of your products by Red Hat, or > which might cause a consumer to believe that your products come from > Red Hat without entering into a written agreement with Red Hat is > trademark infringement. > > You can call downloaded copies "Red Hat Linux" and burn copies of "Red > Hat Linux", and call it such at your office as long as it is only for > use internally. Once you start calling it "Red Hat Linux" externally, > you have entered into the marketplace wand you cause confusion as to > the origin of the product that you're providing. You keep saying much the same thing, without addressing the points I raise. Red Hat has chosen to apply the GPL to its CDs, to the content of the minimum package called "Red Hat Linux." In choosing to apply the GPL you grant me permission to unconditionally reproduce and redistribute the software, altered or not, for fee or not. Despite your assertion at one point to the contrary, the term "Red Hat Linux" is widely held to be the a set of software prepared by and released by Red Hat. When one wants to be specific, one may say "Red Hat Linux 8.0" or "Official Red Hat linux Operating System" or similar. Red Hat did not *have* to choose the GPL for the package, but it did. It could have used some other licence (as I presume it does with RHAS), but it did not. Implicit in the right to redistribute is the right to accurately identify what it is I have on offer. If what I have is a set of CDs whose md5sums are the same as those for the ISO files, then common usage has it that I have "Red Hat Linux," and this usage is supported by Red Hat's own website. If I market this set of CDs as being "Dingo Linux" and not "Red Hat Linux" then I probably contravene our Trade Practices Act. By my chount, Phoebe has 1410 packages; to be sure, not 1410 packages as counted by their authors because Red Hat has modified many of them, if only by dividing packages (such as fetchmail) into two (fetchmail, fatchmail-conf), but a significant number howevery they're counted. Probably most of those are covered by the GPL. Their authors do not require Red Hat to call their products (such as fetchmail) by some other name (maybe mailcollector), to do so would be ridiculous and cause enormous confusion. Didn't you, Matt, say that you cannot use the name "Apache" to promote your packaging of the web server of that name? Of course not, Apache is listed on the box of my Official Red Hat 5.1 Linux Operating System. Red Hat grants *some* permission to describe the software they downloaded from the Internet as "Red Hat Linux" and to apply Red Hat's trademarks to it. It seems to me that Red Hat is seeking to prevent people from competing with it by using trademark law (or at least, Red Hat's interpretation of it) to prevent people from describing what they offer. It can prevent me from redistributing copies of offical Red Hat linux by using a licence other than the GPL; I actually wouldn't mind that too much, provided I had a reasonably simple means to create CDs that I could represent as "equivalent to Red Hat Linux." As I reread the guidelines yet again, I see it referring to "Your product," meaning "My product." Red Hat Linux is _not_ *MY* product. If I modify the software in some way so as to add value, then it's my product. I'd be happy to acknowledge it as "unofficial" or "unsupported by Red Hat." That is consistent with the GPL. If I make some changes, then there ought be no impediment to me describing *my* product as "based on Red Hat Linux" because that is an accurate characterisation of what I'd be offering. > > I hope this clears things up and we can stop this thread now. If you > have individual questions, comments, or concerns - especially if > you're wanting to reproduce or redistribute Red Hat Linux or Red Hat > Linux derived products, contact me directly and I will make sure your > request gets routed to the appropriate people. As you said, I'm not the only person who should be concerned about this. I may be thicker than most, or I may be more paranoid than others, or even I may have a better appreciation of the problems for us than others, but I think the list is still the best place for it. At this time in my business, I have absolutely _no_ money to pay in licence fees, even if I felt it a reasonable thing to do. People should not be required to pay licence fees where Red Hat, in the same way, benefits from the work of others without payment of licence fees. That aside, I have already given some tens of thousands of anyone's dollars worth of time supporting (mostly) Red Hat Linux users, with my only rewards the rare thanks, the less rare flame. -- Please, reply only to the list.
