[CentOS] Re: Linux Trademarked? -- now you know why they call it "Fedora Core"

[Bryan J. Smith]

William Warren wrote:
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
> what's everyone's thoughts on this one?

Linux was trademarked by someone almost 10 years ago.  That
person started asserting writes on book publishers and other
media outlets.  After about 18 months thanx to pro-bono
lawyers, Linus was able to wrestle control of the trademark. 
Since then, he has not enforced it.

I'm sure something has now triggered Linus into a legal
position where he must enforce it.  I'm sure he probably
wanted to do it for $1 (like what SSC did on the "Cool It
Works With Linux" hardware branding about 10 years ago), but
it's probably best that he has built a non-profit institution
to deal with the administrative nightmares that would quickly
bog-him-down.

The same thing happened to Red Hat(R).  The trademark issue
brought on by Sun -- shortly after Sun bought Cobalt.  Long,
long story there, but Red Hat ran into the real issue that it
had _never_ enforced its Red Hat (R) trademark, and there was
a viable case that Cobalt had destroyed the value of it as
anything but public domain.  Especially when Red Hat got into
it with Sun during negotiations, Red Hat had _no_ legal
ground to stand on when Sun continued to ship a completely
modified version with all trademarks.

[ Something SuSE didn't tolerate, hence why Sun had to
license from them when they moved to a SuSE Linux base. ;-]

Hence why Red Hat is _extremely_ "tight lipped" on _not_
showing any heritage from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Core on
their pages.  You have to get into the technical Fedora Core
pages.  The pundits used to use this just to be
argumentative, but the reality is the legal issues if Red Hat
ever did acknowledge things.

BTW, _now_ you'all know why Red Hat calls it "Fedora Core"
and _not_ "Fedora Linux" or anything with "Linux."  Red Hat
was smart, they knew this was coming, and they have planned
for it.  It is the eventuality of the trademark game. 
Because no matter how good your intentions are, legal
non-sense always kills it, so it's best to setup your
community projects with this foresight beforehand.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)