Hi,
mythdora is a project that uses Fedora + some ATrpms packages to create a mythtv livecd/dvd. For quite some time I wanted to see it get a cousin based on CentOS5. The packages are already available, it "only" takes some glue.
What are the rules to play with regarding CentOS trademarks/artwork? Is it OK to use them, perhaps even derive some artwork out of it (a television like CentOS logo? :)
Would names like mythcentos or similar be OK with CentOS?
Not that it matters in this context, but who owns CentOS trademarks and artwork? I hope someone does at least in the US to prevent any abuse.
Axel Thimm wrote:
Hi,
mythdora is a project that uses Fedora + some ATrpms packages to create a mythtv livecd/dvd. For quite some time I wanted to see it get a cousin based on CentOS5. The packages are already available, it "only" takes some glue.
What are the rules to play with regarding CentOS trademarks/artwork? Is it OK to use them, perhaps even derive some artwork out of it (a television like CentOS logo? :)
Would names like mythcentos or similar be OK with CentOS?
Being that we (ATRPMS/CentOS) are working together on some projects already and if you are interested in doing this MythCentOS project under the CentOS umbrella, then we can discuss this among the Core CentOS group ... but I think we would agree to allow a MythCentOS to exist and use the CentOS name.
Not that it matters in this context, but who owns CentOS trademarks and artwork? I hope someone does at least in the US to prevent any abuse.
On 8/3/07, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Being that we (ATRPMS/CentOS) are working together on some projects already and if you are interested in doing this MythCentOS project under the CentOS umbrella, then we can discuss this among the Core CentOS group ... but I think we would agree to allow a MythCentOS to exist and use the CentOS name.
Gets my vote.
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 07:57 -0400, Jim Perrin wrote:
On 8/3/07, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Being that we (ATRPMS/CentOS) are working together on some projects already and if you are interested in doing this MythCentOS project under the CentOS umbrella, then we can discuss this among the Core CentOS group ... but I think we would agree to allow a MythCentOS to exist and use the CentOS name.
Gets my vote.
If Axel is interested, I agree that it would be nice to look if that can be worked out.
-- Daniel
On 8/3/07, Daniel de Kok danieldk@pobox.com wrote:
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 07:57 -0400, Jim Perrin wrote:
On 8/3/07, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Being that we (ATRPMS/CentOS) are working together on some projects already and if you are interested in doing this MythCentOS project under the CentOS umbrella, then we can discuss this among the Core CentOS group ... but I think we would agree to allow a MythCentOS to exist and use the CentOS name.
Gets my vote.
If Axel is interested, I agree that it would be nice to look if that can be worked out.
Well I think Axel's question though does cover some other issues though.
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..
On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 11:40:49AM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On 8/3/07, Daniel de Kok danieldk@pobox.com wrote:
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 07:57 -0400, Jim Perrin wrote:
On 8/3/07, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Being that we (ATRPMS/CentOS) are working together on some projects already and if you are interested in doing this MythCentOS project under the CentOS umbrella, then we can discuss this among the Core CentOS group ... but I think we would agree to allow a MythCentOS to exist and use the CentOS name.
Gets my vote.
If Axel is interested, I agree that it would be nice to look if that can be worked out.
Well I think Axel's question though does cover some other issues though.
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, etc. wants to make use of trademarks/artwork it should offer the final product for a check by centos-devel and get the blessing. I wouldn't suggest any blanket approvals though, CentOS should always have the final say to check whether this step would potentially harm the brand instead of strengthening it.
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 19:49 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
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, etc. wants to make use of trademarks/artwork it should offer the final product for a check by centos-devel and get the blessing. I wouldn't suggest any blanket approvals though, CentOS should always have the final say to check whether this step would potentially harm the brand instead of strengthening it.
Registered or not, as far as I understand the most important thing is to protect your trademark. This means actively acting against others in the same field of endeavor who use the name "CentOS".
-- Daniel
Daniel de Kok spake the following on 8/3/2007 11:21 AM:
On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 19:49 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
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, etc. wants to make use of trademarks/artwork it should offer the final product for a check by centos-devel and get the blessing. I wouldn't suggest any blanket approvals though, CentOS should always have the final say to check whether this step would potentially harm the brand instead of strengthening it.
Registered or not, as far as I understand the most important thing is to protect your trademark. This means actively acting against others in the same field of endeavor who use the name "CentOS".
-- Daniel
I agree. Although it is not my decision, I think the "polite" thing to do would be to leave the CentOS trademarks out, but give adequate and glowing credit to the CentOS developers that made the OS possible. Just like the CentOS developers do to upstream whenever they can.
I agree. Although it is not my decision, I think the "polite" thing to do
would be to leave the CentOS trademarks out, but give adequate and glowing credit to the CentOS developers that made the OS possible. Just like the CentOS developers do to upstream whenever they can.
I think that depends on the project, for mythtv I expect this would mostly be a matter of building many packages for a (mostly) unmodified base centos system. As such you could probably have most of these in a base 'centimyth' repo, and pull the rest directly from the centos repos. I think some sort of logo being a merger of the centos logo and mythtv logos would be most appropriate here. Of course this would require approval from the dev team. In Axel's or Dag's case I expect such approval would be for the most part a formality (but would still need to be given!)... For other projects... who knows ;-)
[can you see the trust I have for atrpms, dag and rpmforge? Thanks for the awesome work guys]
Now going back to getting CentOS5 working on a santa rosa macbook pro (out of the box even the network card doesn't work).
Cheers, Maciej
Maciej Żenczykowski spake the following on 8/3/2007 12:29 PM:
I agree. Although it is not my decision, I think the "polite" thing to do
would be to leave the CentOS trademarks out, but give adequate and glowing credit to the CentOS developers that made the OS possible. Just like the CentOS developers do to upstream whenever they can.I think that depends on the project, for mythtv I expect this would mostly be a matter of building many packages for a (mostly) unmodified base centos system. As such you could probably have most of these in a base 'centimyth' repo, and pull the rest directly from the centos repos. I think some sort of logo being a merger of the centos logo and mythtv logos would be most appropriate here. Of course this would require approval from the dev team. In Axel's or Dag's case I expect such approval would be for the most part a formality (but would still need to be given!)... For other projects... who knows ;-)
[can you see the trust I have for atrpms, dag and rpmforge? Thanks for the awesome work guys]
Now going back to getting CentOS5 working on a santa rosa macbook pro (out of the box even the network card doesn't work).
Cheers, Maciej
I think the ideal thing would be a base Centos install, add a "mythtv.repo" by rpm, and yum groupinstall myth-tv and have it all come together. But the original poster seemed to want to make a separate distro to boot from cd and install a working system.
On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 01:36:59PM -0700, Scott Silva wrote:
Maciej Żenczykowski spake the following on 8/3/2007 12:29 PM:
I agree. Although it is not my decision, I think the "polite" thing to do
would be to leave the CentOS trademarks out, but give adequate and glowing credit to the CentOS developers that made the OS possible. Just like the CentOS developers do to upstream whenever they can.I think that depends on the project, for mythtv I expect this would mostly be a matter of building many packages for a (mostly) unmodified base centos system. As such you could probably have most of these in a base 'centimyth' repo, and pull the rest directly from the centos repos. I think some sort of logo being a merger of the centos logo and mythtv logos would be most appropriate here. Of course this would require approval from the dev team. In Axel's or Dag's case I expect such approval would be for the most part a formality (but would still need to be given!)... For other projects... who knows ;-)
[can you see the trust I have for atrpms, dag and rpmforge? Thanks for the awesome work guys]
Now going back to getting CentOS5 working on a santa rosa macbook pro (out of the box even the network card doesn't work).
I think the ideal thing would be a base Centos install, add a "mythtv.repo" by rpm, and yum groupinstall myth-tv and have it all come together. But the original poster seemed to want to make a separate distro to boot from cd and install a working system.
Yes, the idea would be to strip down CentOS to a livecd image with some space left for adding the mythtv packages (and their dependencies).
There is already some work being done by Johnny and someone else I forgot his name (sorry!) to have CentOS liveXXX media, so when that's done it will probably "just" be a matter of comps editing and the like.
BTW whoever is interested in this beast is more than welcome to join in. The core mythdora guys are not that familiar with CentOS.
Although it is not my decision, I think the "polite" thing to do would be to leave the CentOS trademarks out, but give adequate and glowing credit to the CentOS developers that made the OS possible.
Hi,
I work at Wincor Nixdorf, and we want to provide a distribution derived from CentOS as commercial product. Within the distribution we provide software for installing, configuring and operating our "Beetle" POS systems with regard to our customers' needs. The name of the distribution is "WNLPOS", which means "Wincor Nixdorf Linux for Point of Service".
Our actual version of WNLPOS is based on Fedora Core 4. There we eliminated "Fedora" out of menues and artwork, and we created an own artwork just with "WNLPOS" as name.
The question now is if we may mention CentOS in the derived distribution at all. This concerns for example the name of the grub menu entries, and the splash screens and wallpapers of Gnome and KDE. Are we allowed to write "WNLPOS - based on CentOS"? May we use the original logos (artwork), or is it allowed to modifiy them?
-- bjoern.gerhart at wincor-nixdorf.com
Hi,
Gerhart, Bjoern wrote:
I work at Wincor Nixdorf, and we want to provide a distribution derived from CentOS as commercial product. Within the distribution we provide software for installing, configuring and operating our "Beetle" POS systems with regard to our customers' needs. The name of the distribution is "WNLPOS", which means "Wincor Nixdorf Linux for Point of Service".
Sounds good, are you patching the installer or providing scripts for doing this work after the distro is already installed on the machine ?
The question now is if we may mention CentOS in the derived distribution at all. This concerns for example the name of the grub menu entries, and the splash screens and wallpapers of Gnome and KDE. Are we allowed to write "WNLPOS - based on CentOS"? May we use the original logos (artwork), or is it allowed to modifiy them?
Over the course of the next few days, we will put together a definite policy on such matters and publish them on the wiki.
btw, I hope Wincor Nixdorf is planning a huge donation to the project!
- KB
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Hi,
Gerhart, Bjoern wrote:
I work at Wincor Nixdorf, and we want to provide a distribution derived from CentOS as commercial product. Within the distribution we provide software for installing, configuring and operating our "Beetle" POS systems with regard to our customers' needs. The name of the distribution is "WNLPOS", which means "Wincor Nixdorf Linux for Point of Service".
Sounds good, are you patching the installer or providing scripts for doing this work after the distro is already installed on the machine ?
To carry this just a little further ... if the "Beetle" POS would run on CentOS-5 (the installer is much better able to handle added repositories), then why build a distro at all.
You could distribute CentOS as is (or a Core version that we can define for such things) and you could distribute your application as an installable piece (in a separate directory/repository) on the DVD.
Then, you don't have to deal at all with OS updates and can make use of the CentOS public infrastructure for the OS updates. All you need to manage and provide are the specific repositories for the application.
In this scenario, your users are installing CentOS as the OS and Beetle POS as an application. You can then use the CentOS logos as is.
If you keep CentOS as the OS, and make the application work with it as an added repository it does this for you:
1. Keeps your support and work focused on the application.
2. Allows you to distribute fully functional ISOs for install if you want to.
3. Allows your product to also be installable on upstream EL products (as a stand alone repository) ... that way you can also have a repo file that can be used to add the product in those instances too.
The question now is if we may mention CentOS in the derived distribution at all. This concerns for example the name of the grub menu entries, and the splash screens and wallpapers of Gnome and KDE. Are we allowed to write "WNLPOS - based on CentOS"? May we use the original logos (artwork), or is it allowed to modifiy them?
In the scenario that I described above, you are using the CentOS logos as it is the OS
Over the course of the next few days, we will put together a definite policy on such matters and publish them on the wiki.
btw, I hope Wincor Nixdorf is planning a huge donation to the project!
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Sounds good, are you patching the installer or providing scripts for doing this work after the distro is already installed on the machine ?
The concept is, that each customer can easily build his own installation or live medium. The medium can be CD/DVD, USB memorystick or installation via PXE. The target medium to be installed on can be either a hard disk or also a USB memorystick. After installation (or after booting the live medium), the customer has a ready-to-use configured system with the following benefits: - his POS middleware is ready-to-use, following the configuration he has chosen when building his medium - the POS hardware and periphery of our Beetle systems is supported by our own kernel (modules) - the system itself is configured (devices like COM ports, display(s), touch screens, etc) - his application is already installed and may be auto started on system bootup
Over the course of the next few days, we will put together a definite policy on such matters and publish them on the wiki.
That sounds good :-)
btw, I hope Wincor Nixdorf is planning a huge donation to the project!
That's a good idea. When business is running with our "WNLPOS CentOS", I will motivate my boss for donating.
Johnny Hughes wrote:
You could distribute CentOS as is (or a Core version that we can
define
for such things) and you could distribute your application as an installable piece (in a separate directory/repository) on the DVD.
I see your idea, however maybe the requirements we have (see above) are too complex for achieving this.
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,"
If it did, then the same argument would have Dell's use of "Dell" as a trademark would prevent the Dellico families ( http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?fid=7&yr=1920&ln=Delli... ) from using operating a business, "Dellico Computer Systems," and that is ridiculous.
As would be Red Hat's suing the Red Hat Society (my sister is a member), a social club whose distinguishing feature is their wearing a red hat.
The use of a trademark is to prevent the use of a term (CentOS) by someone else to represent that they create or distribute (etc) a product that is _not_ CentOS.
Presumably Dell's not entirely happy about this: http://www.ihatedell.net/ but there have been many accounts of failed legal action by Big Corporates to have such domain names taken down or handed over. About all the actions achieve is fame for the offender.
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.
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,"
If it did, then the same argument would have Dell's use of "Dell" as a trademark would prevent the Dellico families ( http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?fid=7&yr=1920&ln=Delli... ) from using operating a business, "Dellico Computer Systems," and that is ridiculous.
It is not at ALL the same thing...
mythcentos would be a MythTV implementation using the CentOS operating system. It is EXACTLY what trademark law is designed to address. The owner of the CentOS trademark (as it relates to Operating systems) would have every right to require licensing for this.
In your example, that is not the case. The Dellico family can have a computer business, not using dell parts or related to dell and name it Dellico. The can not, however create a DellEnterprise servers line .. they could create a DellicoEnterprise servers line. Surely you see the difference.
As would be Red Hat's suing the Red Hat Society (my sister is a member), a social club whose distinguishing feature is their wearing a red hat.
Not at all the same thing ... PLEASE :D
The use of a trademark is to prevent the use of a term (CentOS) by someone else to represent that they create or distribute (etc) a product that is _not_ CentOS.
But that particular product does Contain CentOS (the firewall or the MythTV solution). You absolutely can not do that without permission. How could anyone think that you could????
Presumably Dell's not entirely happy about this: http://www.ihatedell.net/ but there have been many accounts of failed legal action by Big Corporates to have such domain names taken down or handed over. About all the actions achieve is fame for the offender.
ihatedell is not trying to market a computer product using the Dell name, it is an opinion about the Dell company ... and it is not a trademark issue at all.
On 8/22/07, John Summerfield debian@herakles.homelinux.org 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,"
If it did, then the same argument would have Dell's use of "Dell" as a trademark would prevent the Dellico families ( http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/Fact.aspx?fid=7&yr=1920&ln=Delli... ) from using operating a business, "Dellico Computer Systems," and that is ridiculous.
As would be Red Hat's suing the Red Hat Society (my sister is a member), a social club whose distinguishing feature is their wearing a red hat.
Actually I remember it being the opposite problem in the late 1990's. There was some problem with someone saying they represented the RHS wanting to make sure that RH was not stealling the domain name as RHS had a longer standing name association with redhat.com than say a technology company. I think it was settled all amicably in the end.
-
Axel Thimm -
Daniel de Kok -
Gerhart, Bjoern -
Jim Perrin -
John Summerfield -
Johnny Hughes -
Karanbir Singh -
Maciej Żenczykowski -
Scott Silva -
Stephen John Smoogen