On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 04:28:30PM +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
Axel Thimm wrote:
What are the CentOS trademark guidelines? Currently there do not seem to be any listed on the website. There do not seem to be any in the included product, and there does not seem to be a registered trademark. I know this gets into the murky area of law, ip etc.. but it does come up and people's assumptions that they can use it for anything they want because it is not OBVIOUSLY registered, protected, or guidelined..
I think CentOS should register the trademark in the countries this is most important (US + EU?) and offer a review dependent usage: If a derived product/project like mythcentos or maybe centosfirewall,
I would be very surprised if registering CentOS as a tm had any implications for the words "mythcentos" or "centosfirewall,"
Actually I suggested the above irrespective of the original question.
But to asnwer to your feedback: While NAL I would not really agree with what you say. The trademark is to protect to product and its branding. If I take mythcentos or centosfoo and produce a very crappy derivative product I would harm the project's branding, so it would not be a fair use of the term anymore.