On 15.V.2001 at 17:11 Mo McKinlay wrote: > > > I didn't mean that we must stop to use the trademarks like `Linux'. But > > free programs *must not depend* on that trademark. If I am not allowed > > to distribute an unofficicial kernel and name it `Linux' that is OK. > > But if free programs stop to work because my kernel is not named `Linux' > > that is not OK. > > Most things look at what the kernel is called (via uname(2)) in order to > determine the system. If you change it from 'Linux' to 'LinuxOS' (for > example), you'll see lots of things stop working, not least config.guess > and config.sub.
I suppose that is not a problem. Some CPUs imitate Intels CPUs in their authentication commands. The important is that on the market they don't use the name `Intel'. I suppose I am allowed to make an unofficial kernel which uname returns Linux. I used that as an example. I wrote that free programs must not depend on trademarks. That means that free programs must not make other programs non-free. > A blanket policy for trademarks based on an isolated issue (fonts) would > be silly IMHO. No. The kernel was not good example, but I think it is clean that we don't want to be forced to use unmodified programs because of the trademarks. Anton Zinoviev, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
