On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Oleg Kobets wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Since RedHat is a common name taken from a fairy tale, we can and will use
> the name to desribe the distro. If by their policy you cannot use the logo,
> then don't, but we shure can say "it's a distro that is essentialy a red
> hat". There is no violation there (I am not a lawyer) and it is ok.
>
> That was my late night 2 cents on the subject :)
Hi Oleg,
"RedHat" is not a common name taken from a fairy tale. Perhaps you
are thinking of "Little Red Riding Hood".
Secondly, trademark law in all countries takes into account the context
of the use of a name, not just the name itself. For example, the registrar
of companies in Jerusalem ("rasham hahavarot") would let you register a
company named "IBM Frozen Chickens", but not "IBM Peripheral Computing
Equipment" because the name "IBM" in the context of computing is owned by
IBM, but not in the context of frozen foods.
It looks to me that all you can say is "based on RedHat's Linux
distribution", or "A derivative work of RedHat's Linux distribution".
In reply to Gilad's question, I do not see any basis for claiming that
RedHat has in any way violated either the letter or spirit of the GPL.
Regards,
- yba
>
> Oleg.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gilad Ben-Yossef" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Linux-IL mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 9:49 PM
> Subject: Trademarks, copyright licenses, the GPL and RedHat
>
>
> >
> > Howdie,
> >
> > Since I posted some info on the subject in the past, and since this
> > generated a lot of off list interest and because was looking for info
> > about the subject myself because of this and couldn't find any until
> > now, you might be interesting in the following:
> >
> > http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/
> >
> > It supplies RedHat's guidelines for use it's trademarks and logos.
> >
> > It basically says: unless you asked us for premission, you're not
> > supposed to use our trademarks and logos in stuff you distribute.
> >
> > This means, if you accept their terms, that while you are compeltly free
> > to distribute the software they distribute, you need to not use their
> > trademarks.
> >
> > This includes their logo and name used on the software on their CDs. If
> > you want to distribute the software, you need to remove their trademark
> > from it.
> >
> > It also means that if you distribute redhat distro, but didn';t get
> > their blessing you are not entitled to say it contains RedHat software
> > or it is based on RedHat software.
> >
> > Again, just to make sure - you can and are allowed to distribute the
> > software. You are not allowed to use their name without asking for
> > premission. You can take the software they package and install it on a
> > zillion machines and sell it to a million clients, you are just not
> > allowed to claim it's a RedHat distro you're using and must make sure
> > you don't put their logo and name on what you install.
> >
> > Now, the big 9,000,000$ question is:
> >
> > Does this violate the principles of Free Software (note that I didn't
> > say anything about the GPL license - IANAL, I'm asking if you think it
> > hurts violates the philosophy of Free Software):
> >
> > My *personal* opinion thus far is that it isn't a violation. At least it
> > seems to me to pass the Stallman printer driver test.
> >
> > It does pose some very interesting practical questions - for example,
> > can we install a non modified RedHat logo carrying distro on the next
> > install party? the answer seems to be no, unless we ask for premission
> > to use their logos.
> >
> > Let the flame wars begin.
> >
> > Gilad
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
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