Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:11 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
That was, I think, the concern of the OP.
Again, the mark in trade.
If you signed an agreement for private code that forbid your company from showing any lineage to the original owner, that's 100% different. Specific, written agreements between two parties are far more enforceable because they are explicitly defined.
My company didn't sign any licenses to use its own code.
I have said nothing about Red Hat. I am not frustrated.
Okay, that's just what most of these have boiled down to in the past. ;->
Point taken.
I'm not a lawyer. I only know that I was at a company which used a term in source comments which another company later trademarked. We were forced to change those comments in source to remove the use of the trademarked sign. This was in source which was not distributed (except to contractors who helped maintain it, under NDA).
Did your company have a written agreement? Most companies put extensive trademark restrictions in written agreements to prevent their company from being blamed by changes in the derivative.
My company signed no licenses to use its own code.
[snip]
Why would anyone be frustrated with the Red Had(R) Corporation?
It's just come up a lot of times on this list. After hearing a lot of people bitch and moan about Red Hat(R) Linux because they used a Cobalt product, I had absolutely 0% problem with Red Hat when they put an end to it after Sun forced them. I still hear about how "bad" Red Hat(R) Linux was, or how "uncontrolled" it was, based on the Cobalt products.
Well, I've never felt anything like that. I've had only cordial relations with those people. (I used to use Blue Hat at one time.)
Mike