http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Check out the analysis on GrokLaw....
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050816092029989
Falls under the category of 'necessary evil'....
I certainly haven't spent $250,000 of my own money supporting Linux in any way.
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, William Warren wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE jim@rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:55 -0400, William Warren wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Trademarks must be enforced or they disappear. If the trademark on "Linux" were to disappear, Linus would not be able to stop anyone from calling anything Linux. For example, without the trademark Microsoft could rename Vista to "MS Linux" and there wouldn't be a thing anyone could do.
Someone must enforce the trademark on Linux. Linus has appointed the Linux Mark Institute (LMI) as his trademark enforcement agent. Linus can change this later if he wants.
I trust Linus' intentions.
As long as neither of these two point change, I will trust LMI.
Trademark lawsuits can be expensive. As I understand it, LMI is supposed to be a self-funding non-profit whose sole purpose is to enforce the trademark.
-David
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:02, David Johnston wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:55 -0400, William Warren wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Trademarks must be enforced or they disappear. If the trademark on "Linux" were to disappear, Linus would not be able to stop anyone from calling anything Linux.
Yet the GPL explicitly gives anyone the right to fork the Linux kernel into anything they want as long as they meet the GPL requirements. Odd paradox there, given the requirement to retain proper copyright notices...
Someone must enforce the trademark on Linux.
Or not. Some software will continue to be distributed without restrictions. Whether it is named Linux or not isn't all that important.
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On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 11:27:01AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:02, David Johnston wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:55 -0400, William Warren wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
Trademarks must be enforced or they disappear. If the trademark on "Linux" were to disappear, Linus would not be able to stop anyone from calling anything Linux.
Yet the GPL explicitly gives anyone the right to fork the Linux kernel into anything they want as long as they meet the GPL requirements. Odd paradox there, given the requirement to retain proper copyright notices...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL. Is is a Trademark on the NAME. Feel free to fork the code and name it something else, and you won't have any trademark related problems.
[]s
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:29, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
Yet the GPL explicitly gives anyone the right to fork the Linux kernel into anything they want as long as they meet the GPL requirements. Odd paradox there, given the requirement to retain proper copyright notices...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL. Is is a Trademark on the NAME. Feel free to fork the code and name it something else, and you won't have any trademark related problems.
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:39 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:29, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
Yet the GPL explicitly gives anyone the right to fork the Linux kernel into anything they want as long as they meet the GPL requirements. Odd paradox there, given the requirement to retain proper copyright notices...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL. Is is a Trademark on the NAME. Feel free to fork the code and name it something else, and you won't have any trademark related problems.
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Yes ... that is a linux kernel
You can't use "Linux" in the name of your company or the name of your product without permission.
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:43, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Yes ... that is a linux kernel
You can't use "Linux" in the name of your company or the name of your product without permission.
So how do you describe your product, giving proper credit without infringing? Have you cleared everything up with RedHat after getting the same kind of letter from them. And if so, are you sure you wouldn't be sued out of existence anyway if it were some company other than RedHat under the same circumstances?
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:55 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:43, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Yes ... that is a linux kernel
You can't use "Linux" in the name of your company or the name of your product without permission.
So how do you describe your product, giving proper credit without infringing? Have you cleared everything up with RedHat after getting the same kind of letter from them.
Yes we have.
And if so, are you sure you wouldn't be sued out of existence anyway if it were some company other than RedHat under the same circumstances?
They have trademark guidelines, which we are following. If it were another company with other guidelines, we would follow those too.
We have contacted them (the upstream provider) about several other issues, like how they would like us to word the way we distribute their "Open Publication License" documentation so that they receive credit for their work and there is no misunderstanding by either of our users that CentOS is not a Red Hat product.
This should explain everything fairly well: http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=13
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:43, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Yes ... that is a linux kernel
You can't use "Linux" in the name of your company or the name of your product without permission.
So how do you describe your product, giving proper credit without infringing? Have you cleared everything up with RedHat after getting the same kind of letter from them. And if so, are you sure you wouldn't be sued out of existence anyway if it were some company other than RedHat under the same circumstances?
I don't know. I know this: I worked for a company which had a product named DEX for "Digital EXchange". Later, a company in Japan trademarked that name, and we spent a *lot* of effort changing "DEX" to "DSCDEX" in our source code. We were forced to do that. Our source code was *not* publicly available, and was considered trade secret. So if a trademark can force a company to remove a name from trade secret source, I dunno why it wouldn't force removal from publicly available source.
Mike
Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times.
If this was the case, CentOS couldn't exist. Heck, Red Hat Enterprise Linux couldn't exist. This is trademark. It's about a "mark" in "trade." If you do not use the mark in the trade, you are fine.
If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you
reconcile
that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Read your GPL more closely. GPL requires the software be functional without additional requirements. You do not need a trademark for it to be functional. The GPL does not prohibit bundling of other software that has restrictions, as long as the software does not require it to function.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Read your GPL more closely. GPL requires the software be functional without additional requirements. You do not need a trademark for it to be functional. The GPL does not prohibit bundling of other software that has restrictions, as long as the software does not require it to function.
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
Mike
On Tuesday 23 August 2005 17:57, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Read your GPL more closely. GPL requires the software be functional without additional requirements. You do not need a trademark for it to be functional. The GPL does not prohibit bundling of other software that has restrictions, as long as the software does not require it to function.
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
What source? Other than the Linux kernel itself, what source has Linux in it?
As to the Linux kernel itself, isn't the primary copyright holder the same person as the trademark holder? (Yes; Linus has both the main copyright and the trademark; he doesn't have to have a trademark license to use the name in his own software).
And let's not confuse trademark with copyright; they are two entirely different things.
Lamar Owen wrote:
On Tuesday 23 August 2005 17:57, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Read your GPL more closely. GPL requires the software be functional without additional requirements. You do not need a trademark for it to be functional. The GPL does not prohibit bundling of other software that has restrictions, as long as the software does not require it to function.
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
What source? Other than the Linux kernel itself, what source has Linux in it?
If you make modifications to the source, and redistribute it according to GPL, then source you are distributing has the trademark in it.
And that's a violation.
As to the Linux kernel itself, isn't the primary copyright holder the same person as the trademark holder? (Yes; Linus has both the main copyright and the trademark; he doesn't have to have a trademark license to use the name in his own software).
In this case, yes.
And let's not confuse trademark with copyright; they are two entirely different things.
Speak for yourself. I'm not confusing them.
Mike
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
If you make modifications to the source, and redistribute it according to GPL, then source you are distributing has the trademark in it. And that's a violation.
???
Then you'd have to yank every God damn piece of Linux software on the shelf, distributed on the Internet, etc... anytime someone put a trademark on them. You'd eventually _kill_ anything GPL being marked with anything, because GPL couldn't be used for anything where someone applied a trademark.
I can distribute 100% non-GPL software with GPL software, yet I can't distribute a trademark.
Now if this all because you're frustrated with Red Hat, need I remind people that Red Hat does _not_ have to put SRPMS out on the Internet at all. In fact, that's exactly what SuSE does not do -- they only distribute them with the SLES product.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
If you make modifications to the source, and redistribute it according to GPL, then source you are distributing has the trademark in it. And that's a violation.
???
Then you'd have to yank every God damn piece of Linux software on the shelf, distributed on the Internet, etc... anytime someone put a trademark on them. You'd eventually _kill_ anything GPL being marked with anything, because GPL couldn't be used for anything where someone applied a trademark.
That was, I think, the concern of the OP.
I can distribute 100% non-GPL software with GPL software, yet I can't distribute a trademark.
Now if this all because you're frustrated with Red Hat, need I remind people that Red Hat does _not_ have to put SRPMS out on the Internet at all. In fact, that's exactly what SuSE does not do -- they only distribute them with the SLES product.
I have said nothing about Red Hat. I am not frustrated.
What I saw was a post by someone who noted that Linus Torvald has trademarked Linux(R) and is now actively *enforcing* that trademark, and wondered whether this had any impact on GPLd code, specifically the kernel itself, which has the Linux(R) mark embedded in it in comments.
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).
So, I think that the concern about possible conflict with GPLed code is not an unreasonable one. Anyone who wanted to distribute the source to the kernel might be required to remove the trademarked sign first, or at least to change it to Linux(R) somewhere and explain who held the trademark in each file where it first occurred.
Why would anyone be frustrated with the Red Had(R) Corporation?
Mike
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.
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. ;->
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.
So, I think that the concern about possible conflict with GPLed code is not an unreasonable one.
There is no conflict. If Linus got that anal (if he even could legally under US, among other jurisdiction, common law on trademarks), the simple solution is to fork the project and yank all the names out. That would be the end of it, which is allowed under the GPL.
Anyone who wanted to distribute the source to the kernel might be required to remove the trademarked sign first, or at least to change it to Linux(R) somewhere and explain who held the trademark in each file where it first occurred.
I'd really like to see that tested under US common law on trademarks when there is no written agreement in place.
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.
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:11 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
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. ;->
Not as much as you have implied though >:)
Kind regards, -- dag wieers, dag@wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 03:39 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
Not as much as you have implied though >:)
Oh com'mon Dag.
Just because I was the first guy who started defending Red Hat on this list doesn't mean that they weren't warranted many times prior. And I have noted that much of the Red Hat slants have gone away as a result.
Although I _am_ sorry I read too much into Mike's post.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 03:39 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
Not as much as you have implied though >:)
Oh com'mon Dag.
Just because I was the first guy who started defending Red Hat on this list doesn't mean that they weren't warranted many times prior. And I have noted that much of the Red Hat slants have gone away as a result.
Although I _am_ sorry I read too much into Mike's post.
No problem. No offence meant or taken, I'm sure.
OTOH, over on FC echo I was recently accused of being willing to argue with a doorknob :-)
Mike
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:08 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
No problem. No offence meant or taken, I'm sure. OTOH, over on FC echo I was recently accused of being willing to argue with a doorknob :-)
You should see the one I started on Fedora Marketing right now.
If Red Hat is not going to allow "Fedora(TM)" to use a hat in its illustration for fear of lack of trademark enforcement, then just what the heck does "Fedora" mean?
It's the same, alleged "loophole" and that only means Red Hat either: A) Has to keep asserting rights to "Fedora(TM)" (fine by me), or B) The owner of "Fedora(TM)" might need to change the name in the future
God, I honestly don't believe someone didn't think this through. I think someone at Red Hat legal should be looking at it seriously.
Craig White wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:08 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
OTOH, over on FC echo I was recently accused of being willing to argue with a doorknob :-)
seems as though you've come to the right place then
;-)
Craig
Hey, thanks! I needed that!
Last Thursday I got a phone call, and found out that my daughter (aged 23) has stage 3 cervical cancer. My contract came to an abrupt end Friday, and my Menier's disease is acting up again.
If any find my posts the last few days a bit much, cut me a little slack, please.
Sorry if I'm a little argumentative.
Mike
Some one knows how I can make work together Active Directory and postfix.
I have users on Windows 2003 on Ms AD, and I wan postfix to delivery mail to mbox and send mail from users on the Ma Server.
Or some one knows where I can find some manual for this.
I know there is a mailing list from postfix but I gat no answer from that.
Any help.
Este correo fue escaneado y se encuentra libre de virus.
Este correo fue escaneado y se encuentra libre de virus.
On 24/08/05, Carlos Arellano carellano@chihuahua.gob.mx wrote:
Some one knows how I can make work together Active Directory and postfix.
Have a read of these...
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~malth/gaptuning/postfix/
http://postfix.state-of-mind.de/patrick.koetter/mailrelay/
Will.
Will McDonald wrote:
On 24/08/05, Carlos Arellano carellano@chihuahua.gob.mx wrote:
Some one knows how I can make work together Active Directory and postfix.
Have a read of these...
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~malth/gaptuning/postfix/
http://postfix.state-of-mind.de/patrick.koetter/mailrelay/
Will.
Did you accidentally hijack the thread?
Mike
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
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:07 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
My company didn't sign any licenses to use its own code.
But you _did_ license a product from Company B.
Trust me dude, I've been there. I've built C, Perl and shell code around licensed products. Namely Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools that are easily 6 figures per license.
And I've read those _written_ licensing agreements. They forbid a _lot_ of even _internal_ usage of their trademarks. We are bound by them because we signed.
If you don't have a signed agreement, then common law is used.
My company signed no licenses to use its own code.
Again, did you have _any_ written agreement with company B where they said you had agreed to not use their trademarks, or some other clause that you were not entitled to misappropriate different forms of their IP (including trademarks) even internally?
If they are anything like the licensing agreements I've seen, _yes_.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:07 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
My company didn't sign any licenses to use its own code.
But you _did_ license a product from Company B.
My company had no contractural relationships with Company B whatsoever.
[snip]
My company signed no licenses to use its own code.
Again, did you have _any_ written agreement with company B where they said you had agreed to not use their trademarks, or some other clause that you were not entitled to misappropriate different forms of their IP (including trademarks) even internally?
No. There were no such agreements. There was exactly one piece of software (in many parts) owned wholly and completely by my company.
Nothing was owned by Company B which Company A acquired by any means whatsoever.
If they are anything like the licensing agreements I've seen, _yes_.
Since they didn't exist, they couldn't be like anything you have seen.
Mike
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 23:02 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
My company had no contractural relationships with Company B whatsoever.
Well, I was trying to follow your logic. You changed it in your follow up.
Based on that, you _did_ sell products that were marketed with Company B's trademark? Correct?
No. There were no such agreements. There was exactly one piece of software (in many parts) owned wholly and completely by my company. Nothing was owned by Company B which Company A acquired by any means whatsoever.
Again, please re-iterate in the A, B, C?, D? nomenclature.
A is the software developer/reseller B are the clients C is the trademark holder (even if ex-post-facto) D is someone who licensed something to A (?)
Did A use C's trademark publicly? Did A use C's trademark in any context? Is there a D? Is D the company that originated the name (now trademarked)?
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 23:02 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
My company had no contractural relationships with Company B whatsoever.
Well, I was trying to follow your logic. You changed it in your follow up.
Based on that, you _did_ sell products that were marketed with Company B's trademark? Correct?
Umm. Before the trademark, yes. Not after.
No. There were no such agreements. There was exactly one piece of software (in many parts) owned wholly and completely by my company. Nothing was owned by Company B which Company A acquired by any means whatsoever.
Again, please re-iterate in the A, B, C?, D? nomenclature.
A is the software developer/reseller B are the clients C is the trademark holder (even if ex-post-facto) D is someone who licensed something to A (?)
Did A use C's trademark publicly? Did A use C's trademark in any context? Is there a D? Is D the company that originated the name (now trademarked)?
No need for C and D, they don't enter into the situation.
Company A developed software and hardware. It knew nothing about Company B.
Company B knew nothing about Company A.
Company A used names for the software and hardware it developed for more than 20 years. By an oversight, it did not trademark those names.
Company B, independently of Company A, later developed products somewhat similar to Company A's products. Company B trademarked, in its country, the names Company A had been using for 20+ years.
A short time later, Company B discovered that Company A existed, and was and had been using the names which Company B had recently trademarked.
Company B contacted Company A and demanded that Company A cease to use Company B's trademarked names.
Neither Company A nor Company B ever purchased, licensed, resold, marketed, published, or in any other manner obtained anything the other company produced. Neither had any contractural agreements with the other at any time.
They did have a some sort of agreement that Company A had some time to remove the use of Company B's trademark from all literature, source code, etc, and that Company B would not pursue Company A legally during the "grace period", in order that Company A could continue doing business w/o being stopped dead in its tracks.
(This is the "official" version. Many at Company A considered that Company B knew about Company A's products and names, and deliberately abused the oversight to "steal" the goodwill and reputation associated with those names by trademarking them. I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in my recounting. Certainly, Company A was well-known, and its products had a fine reputation at the time.)
Mike
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 01:02 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Umm. Before the trademark, yes. Not after.
Then this entire thread has been a useless discussion.
I know the point you were trying to make on source code, but it's not an option. Someone _can_ run "strings" on your binaries and possibly see a trademark. In fact, that's how many people using GPL licensed code not under the terms of the GPL get caught by their copyright holders.
If it's a publicly known name and distributed under the GPL, then it has very different rules on what trademark protections are allowed compared to something non-GPL. I've tried to cover those, and I think this point is very much moot given the fact that you _did_ use the trademark publicly.
Company A used names for the software and hardware it developed for more than 20 years. By an oversight, it did not trademark those names.
There is a case of "prior art/use" if it had been for 20 years.
They did have a some sort of agreement that Company A had some time to remove the use of Company B's trademark from all literature, source code, etc, and that Company B would not pursue Company A legally during the "grace period", in order that Company A could continue doing business w/o being stopped dead in its tracks.
Then there was some agreements in effect.
Company A should have sought other counsel, possibly litigation.
(This is the "official" version. Many at Company A considered that Company B knew about Company A's products and names, and deliberately abused the oversight to "steal" the goodwill and reputation associated with those names by trademarking them. I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in my recounting. Certainly, Company A was well-known, and its products had a fine reputation at the time.)
Again, blame your poor counsel.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 01:02 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Umm. Before the trademark, yes. Not after.
Then this entire thread has been a useless discussion.
How so? Linus Torvald published the Linux(R) kernel some time back. Later, he trademarked the name "Linux". Now, he is enforcing the trademark. If he pushes things (and he may have to, if the trademark is to survive) he may have to require that anyone republishing his stuff, even under GPL, remove the string, even from source, and even if it doesn't appear in the object.
I know the point you were trying to make on source code, but it's not an option. Someone _can_ run "strings" on your binaries and possibly see a trademark. In fact, that's how many people using GPL licensed code not under the terms of the GPL get caught by their copyright holders.
If it's a publicly known name and distributed under the GPL, then it has very different rules on what trademark protections are allowed compared to something non-GPL. I've tried to cover those, and I think this point is very much moot given the fact that you _did_ use the trademark publicly.
Company A used names for the software and hardware it developed for more than 20 years. By an oversight, it did not trademark those names.
There is a case of "prior art/use" if it had been for 20 years.
I'm not an expert at Japanese law. The trademark was filed in Japan. Company A wanted to do business in Japan.
"Prior art" is a matter of patent law, not trademark. I dunno about "use".
They did have a some sort of agreement that Company A had some time to remove the use of Company B's trademark from all literature, source code, etc, and that Company B would not pursue Company A legally during the "grace period", in order that Company A could continue doing business w/o being stopped dead in its tracks.
Then there was some agreements in effect.
I got the impression that it was a "handshake". IOW, "Yuhv got 24 hours to git out-a-town, then I'm comin' gunnin' fer yuh.
Company A should have sought other counsel, possibly litigation.
Are you an expert at Japanese law?
(This is the "official" version. Many at Company A considered that Company B knew about Company A's products and names, and deliberately abused the oversight to "steal" the goodwill and reputation associated with those names by trademarking them. I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in my recounting. Certainly, Company A was well-known, and its products had a fine reputation at the time.)
Again, blame your poor counsel.
For the oversight, certainly.
Mike
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 01:30, Mike McCarty wrote:
How so? Linus Torvald published the Linux(R) kernel some time back. Later, he trademarked the name "Linux". Now, he is enforcing the trademark. If he pushes things (and he may have to, if the trademark is to survive) he may have to require that anyone republishing his stuff, even under GPL, remove the string, even from source, and even if it doesn't appear in the object.
Which I think presents an interesting paradox. In publishing something under the GPL, Linus has already given everyone who has a copy the right to redistribute verbatim or changed copies as long as the GPL requirements are met (part of which includes a statement that no additional restrictions can apply). So, prior to the establishment of the trademark, the right to redistribute copies including the name has been given away. In fact, I don't see how you could meet the requirement of keeping copyright notices intact for the linux kernel without calling it linux. And I'd expect it to be very difficult to remove the name from the source code and keep it working.
There might be a special case here since Linus still controls the trademark, but suppose it survives him and falls into the wrong hands. Suppose, for the worst case example, SCO owned the trademark. What could we expect then? When I was developing stuff under AT&T SysV UNIX years ago I would never have guessed what was going to happen to ownership of that code/name/trademark. Does the GPL really provide the irrevokable protection it claims in spite of any subsequent attempts that might be made to limit use/redistribution?
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 01:30, Mike McCarty wrote:
How so? Linus Torvald published the Linux(R) kernel some time back. Later, he trademarked the name "Linux". Now, he is enforcing the trademark. If he pushes things (and he may have to, if the trademark is to survive) he may have to require that anyone republishing his stuff, even under GPL, remove the string, even from source, and even if it doesn't appear in the object.
Which I think presents an interesting paradox. In publishing something
under the GPL, Linus has already given everyone who has a copy the right to redistribute verbatim or changed copies as long as the GPL requirements are met (part of which includes a statement that no additional restrictions can apply). So, prior to the establishment of the trademark, the right to redistribute copies including the name has been given away. In fact, I don't see how you could meet the requirement of keeping copyright notices intact for the linux kernel without calling it linux. And I'd expect it to be very difficult
Precisely my point. And, in order to preserve the trademark, he may have to do something of the sort. Remember, the law doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be enforceable :-)
to remove the name from the source code and keep it working.
Why is that?
There might be a special case here since Linus still controls the trademark, but suppose it survives him and falls into the wrong hands. Suppose, for the worst case example, SCO owned the trademark.
Now, now. Your prejudices are showing :-)
How about Yoko Ono?
What could we expect then? When I was developing stuff under AT&T SysV UNIX years ago I would never have guessed what was going to happen to ownership of that code/name/trademark. Does the GPL really provide the irrevokable protection it claims in spite of any subsequent attempts that might be made to limit use/redistribution?
I dunno. There is legal theory in support of the GPL, and some people who think the theory is absolutely nuts, and can't really be enforced.
I think Benjamin Franklin was right in opposing certain "IP" rights. IIRC, in the US of A there are three (3) legally enforceable IP rights: Copyright Patent Trade Mark
There is also Trade Secret, but that is not legally enforceable. One *can* however sue spies.
I was surprised to see the mention of the phrase "fair use" in the australian website. I was under the impression that the "fair use" doctrine was a USA thing only. Apparently not.
Not too long ago, there was a seminal case involving the "fair use" doctrine as applied to copyright. It seems that there was a university professor who made Xerox(TM) copies of some books he had, and stored them in a filing cabinet. He was sued. His defense was "fair use". The plaintiffs pointed out that he stored the copies in his file, but did not actually "use" them. The plaintiffs prevailed, and he had to destroy the copies and pay some damages. I forget the details, but I vividly recall just how literal these things are. "Fair use" *does* mean *use*.
So I wonder how one can have "fair use" of a Trade Mark? Seems impossible.
YMMV
Mike
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 13:10, Mike McCarty wrote:
In fact, I don't see how you could meet the requirement of keeping copyright notices intact for the linux kernel without calling it linux. And I'd expect it to be very difficult
Precisely my point. And, in order to preserve the trademark, he may have to do something of the sort. Remember, the law doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be enforceable :-)
to remove the name from the source code and keep it working.
Why is that?
Consider all the independently written and maintained kernel modules that expect to find needed things under /usr/include/linux as a simple example. I'm sure some things that peek there at run-time too.
There might be a special case here since Linus still controls the trademark, but suppose it survives him and falls into the wrong hands. Suppose, for the worst case example, SCO owned the trademark.
Now, now. Your prejudices are showing :-)
How about Yoko Ono?
OK, some unnamed entity with a history of taking money from a well-heeled company and subsequently causing trouble for it's competitors. Note that I'm not saying those things are related, but I don't think it applies to Yoko.
Yes. I'm top posting. At this point I do not care. Please for the love of GOD let this thread die. Please carry it off list and have your way with it, but it's sickening that it's carried on for so long.
On 8/24/05, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 13:10, Mike McCarty wrote:
In fact, I don't see how you could meet the requirement of keeping copyright notices intact for the linux kernel without calling it linux. And I'd expect it to be very difficult
Precisely my point. And, in order to preserve the trademark, he may have to do something of the sort. Remember, the law doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be enforceable :-)
to remove the name from the source code and keep it working.
Why is that?
Consider all the independently written and maintained kernel modules that expect to find needed things under /usr/include/linux as a simple example. I'm sure some things that peek there at run-time too.
There might be a special case here since Linus still controls the trademark, but suppose it survives him and falls into the wrong hands. Suppose, for the worst case example, SCO owned the trademark.
Now, now. Your prejudices are showing :-)
How about Yoko Ono?
OK, some unnamed entity with a history of taking money from a well-heeled company and subsequently causing trouble for it's competitors. Note that I'm not saying those things are related, but I don't think it applies to Yoko.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I stopped responding quite awhile ago, and there has been a dozen posts since. I guess it doesn't matter if I respond or not, other people will take up the slack? @-p I feel bad that I went on as long as it did, but I left it right after I changed the subject to take it off list.
Jim Perrin jperrin@gmail.com wrote:
Yes. I'm top posting. At this point I do not care. Please for the love of GOD let this thread die. Please carry it off list and have your way with it, but it's sickening that it's carried on for so long.
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:11 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
If you make modifications to the source, and redistribute it according to GPL, then source you are distributing has the trademark in it. And that's a violation.
Then you'd have to yank every God damn piece of Linux software on the shelf, distributed on the Internet, etc... anytime someone put a trademark on them. You'd eventually _kill_ anything GPL being marked with anything, because GPL couldn't be used for anything where someone applied a trademark.
That was, I think, the concern of the OP.
I can distribute 100% non-GPL software with GPL software, yet I can't distribute a trademark.
What I saw was a post by someone who noted that Linus Torvald has trademarked Linux(R) and is now actively *enforcing* that trademark, and wondered whether this had any impact on GPLd code, specifically the kernel itself, which has the Linux(R) mark embedded in it in comments.
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
I think your company's lawyers decided it was cheaper to spend a thousand programmer-hours changing comments than to do their jobs. Trademark law prohibits you from making a buck off another guy's trademark; it does NOT require you to change comments in code you don't distribute.
There's an old example from the computer industry: DEC used to sell computers under the trademark VAX, while another company (Danish, if I remember correctly) sold vacuum cleaners under the same name. There was no trademark conflict because no one in his right mind is going to confuse a VAX vacuum with a VAX computer. A quick pair of letters (one from DEC disclaiming any interest in selling vacuums, and one from VAX disclaiming any plans to sell computers) and the problem went away.
Linus' trademark means is that no one can sell software under the name Linux(R) without his permission, and that's all it means. And in reference to his enforcing the trademark, if he doesn't then he loses it.
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
Huh? I totally didn't understand what you even said.
BTW, something isn't a trademark if it's not being referenced in a market context.
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 17:46, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
Huh? I totally didn't understand what you even said.
BTW, something isn't a trademark if it's not being referenced in a market context.
Isn't it up to the current owner of the trademark to decide whether something that is visible at all is in a 'market context'? The current owner of the Linux trademark may not object to the name being in a copyright statement and available source code which clearly alludes to the name of the product but another company might object under similar circumstances. Or a future owner of the trademark might.
Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Isn't it up to the current owner of the trademark to decide whether something that is visible at all is in a 'market context'?
To a point, yes.
Remember, the original point here was if bundling trademarks violates the GPL. If the trademark is not required for the GPL to function, then the software is being legally distributed under the terms of the GPL.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Err, I believe the problem is the other way. The trademark prohibits the use of the name in the source.
Huh? I totally didn't understand what you even said.
BTW, something isn't a trademark if it's not being referenced in a market context.
As I pointed out, a company I worked for was required to remove a trademark acquired after the fact by another company. From source.
Do you consider privately owned source code sitting on privately owned discs, and not distributed to be "a market context"?
Mike
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
As I pointed out, a company I worked for was required to remove a trademark acquired after the fact by another company. From source.
You're flipping the problem. The GPL doesn't prevent bundling, the trademark holder prevented redistribution! That has 0% to do with GPL limitations.
Do you consider privately owned source code sitting on privately owned discs, and not distributed to be "a market context"?
Did you license the source code under an agreement? If so, check the terms of that agreement. That's a further issue that has 0% to do with GPL limitations.
I think you're doing a 180 on the legal flow here.
The GPL does not require you to remove anything, only something that requires it to function. You can distribute GPL software with trademarks, images, etc... do not require them to function.
There is no redistribution issues if the trademarks are removed, because there was no redistribution issue when the vendor added them.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net wrote:
As I pointed out, a company I worked for was required to remove a trademark acquired after the fact by another company. From source.
You're flipping the problem. The GPL doesn't prevent bundling, the trademark holder prevented redistribution! That has 0% to do with GPL limitations.
I was responding to the original question, which IIRC was whether GPL requirements possibly conflict with the trademark limitations. If something is GPLed, then it must allow the user to make mods and redistribute.
OTOH, the user has no authority to redistribute with the trademark in place.
So, ISTM, that if one ried to redistribute, he'd have to go edit out all the trademarks wherever they occur in the source.
Do you consider privately owned source code sitting on privately owned discs, and not distributed to be "a market context"?
Did you license the source code under an agreement?
No. I tried as specifically as possible to point out that this was privately held, non-published, trade secret, not distributed code. The source was never intentionally divulged to anyone, except for contractors who signed NDAs.
If so, check the terms of that agreement. That's a further issue that has 0% to do with GPL limitations.
I don't know what you are trying to say.
My point is that if a trademark registration can force editing of non-distributed code to remove it, then ISTM that it certainly can require removal from distributed code, if the distributer is not the holder of the trademark.
I think you're doing a 180 on the legal flow here.
I think that somehow I didn't convey to you what my concern was.
The GPL does not require you to remove anything, only something that requires it to function. You can distribute GPL software with trademarks, images, etc... do not require them to function.
Trademarks require removal, not GPL.
There is no redistribution issues if the trademarks are removed, because there was no redistribution issue when the vendor added them.
My point exactly. If you take the source to the Linux kernel, and attempt to redistribute it, but don't remove the trademarked signs from it, then that is a violation.
Mike
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:03 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
I was responding to the original question, which IIRC was whether GPL requirements possibly conflict with the trademark limitations.
Does the software require the trademark to run? In the case of "Linux," maybe.
As such, Linus could not enforce the trademark down to the anal power (again, assuming he could under existing law, which I seriously doubt). But he can claim a trademark and he can enforce it where it does not conflict with the GPL.
No. I tried as specifically as possible to point out that this was privately held, non-published, trade secret, not distributed code. The source was never intentionally divulged to anyone, except for contractors who signed NDAs.
No, you missed mine and it's the _crux_ of this debate.
What I said was that your company had a written agreement for that source code. I've seen many of these and the licenser _explicitly_ requires the licensee to _edit_out_ all trademarks. That is an additional, legal detail that you were bound to because the original licenser does not want your developers blaming them for changes you might make.
This has nothing to do with the public licenses where there are not written contracts. Linus can prevent you from using his mark in the trade, but he cannot enforce you to remove any reference to Linux in source code without an additional, written agreement.
My point is that if a trademark registration can force editing of non-distributed code to remove it, then ISTM that it certainly can require removal from distributed code, if the distributer is not the holder of the trademark.
Here's a key example.
When nVidia released its 3D drivers as open source for XFree86 3.3, they changed all of the trademarked identifiers. nVidia did that because they were legally bound by _written_ contracts for that source code.
[ SIDE NOTE: Independent developers then started editing the identifiers back to their originals, nVidia ran into some legal "problems" as a result. ]
Trademarks require removal, not GPL.
But to what level? What context?
If your have a written licensed agreement that says you have to remove every damn reference, then you do. If you don't, then things change quite a bit under the law. Instead of a written agreement that is enforceable, you have an agreement under common law with regards to mark in trade usage.
My point exactly. If you take the source to the Linux kernel, and attempt to redistribute it, but don't remove the trademarked signs from it, then that is a violation.
But you _do_ have Red Hat(R) trademarks all over the place in CentOS. Same deal with Debian, Gentoo, etc...
CentOS does not license and does not have a written agreement with Red Hat. CentOS has just removed any "marks in the trade" context references to Red Hat(R), and has done a good job to do this to the liken of Legal.
Same deal with Linux(R) now. CentOS does not have a written agreement with LMI. In the absence of those requirements, it falls to common law on trademarks. And trust me, they don't go to the anal power.
Like your company's _written_ licensing agreement can and did.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:03 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
I was responding to the original question, which IIRC was whether GPL requirements possibly conflict with the trademark limitations.
Does the software require the trademark to run? In the case of "Linux," maybe.
As such, Linus could not enforce the trademark down to the anal power (again, assuming he could under existing law, which I seriously doubt). But he can claim a trademark and he can enforce it where it does not conflict with the GPL.
No. I tried as specifically as possible to point out that this was privately held, non-published, trade secret, not distributed code. The source was never intentionally divulged to anyone, except for contractors who signed NDAs.
No, you missed mine and it's the _crux_ of this debate.
What I said was that your company had a written agreement for that
My company had no such agreement for its own code.
source code. I've seen many of these and the licenser _explicitly_ requires the licensee to _edit_out_ all trademarks. That is an additional, legal detail that you were bound to because the original licenser does not want your developers blaming them for changes you might make.
We seem to be talking around each other, so just to make things very very clear, here is the state of affairs at the time:
Company A created, from scratch, a bunch of source code.
In the source code created by Company A was used, in comments, a certain term. It also used that term in certain pulished documents and in product names.
The source code created by Company A did not license the use or divulge the source it had created to any other person, corporate or otherwise, except under NDA, considering all information about that source to be trade secret.
Company A did license the executable, for execution only on proprietary hardware which it designed and manufactured.
Company B later came along and trademarked the term mentioned above.
Company B's lawyers informed Company A's lawyers that all use of the now trademarked term belonged solely to Company B, and that any use of Company B's now trademarked term must cease.
Company A's lawyers informed all personnel in Company A that all such terms must be removed from all documentation.
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
The engineers gritted their teeth, and did a massive search and edit to modify the source.
This has nothing to do with the public licenses where there are not written contracts. Linus can prevent you from using his mark in the trade, but he cannot enforce you to remove any reference to Linux in source code without an additional, written agreement.
That is not what the corporate lawyers concluded, and the company spent many $$$ to comply, belive me.
[snip]
Perhaps now that the situation is more clear, we can be talking on the same page. (Unless we already were :-)
Mike
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:04 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Company A did license the executable, for execution only on proprietary hardware which it designed and manufactured. Company B later came along and trademarked the term mentioned above. Company B's lawyers informed Company A's lawyers that all use of the now trademarked term belonged solely to Company B, and that any use of Company B's now trademarked term must cease. Company A's lawyers informed all personnel in Company A that all such terms must be removed from all documentation.
Bingo! That's the logic right there. Company A had a _written_ licensing agreement. Public distribution doesn't matter. You had a _written_ licensing agreement.
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
Yes, because Company A was contractually obligated to terms in its _written_ licensing agreement. Dude, read some of these written agreements sometime. ;->
That is not what the corporate lawyers concluded, and the company spent many $$$ to comply, belive me.
I know, I believe you. But company A (yours I assume) had a _written_ licensing agreement. Doesn't matter that it wasn't on the software itself, it was for a product from company B, and there were trademarks you had agreed to _in_writing_. Even if they come later, read that original, _written_ licensing agreement.
It's different when you do _not_ have something in writing. So your story is 0% applicable.
Perhaps now that the situation is more clear, we can be talking on the same page. (Unless we already were :-)
Yes, we were.
In fact, signing a licensing agreement with LMI might be _worse_. Because if it has clauses that say they can change the terms at any time, they might be able to, depending on how significant.
-- Bryan
P.S. I worked in the semiconductor industry for almost 2 years were the typical _single_user_ software license was over $250,000! You betcha they had references to not using trademarks, and I had to make sure my code and scripts and other custom build tools obeyed them! It sounds like your company made a major oversight and suffered the consequences. ;->
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:04 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Company A did license the executable, for execution only on proprietary hardware which it designed and manufactured. Company B later came along and trademarked the term mentioned above. Company B's lawyers informed Company A's lawyers that all use of the now trademarked term belonged solely to Company B, and that any use of Company B's now trademarked term must cease. Company A's lawyers informed all personnel in Company A that all such terms must be removed from all documentation.
Bingo! That's the logic right there. Company A had a _written_
I complete fail to understand your logic.
licensing agreement. Public distribution doesn't matter. You had a _written_ licensing agreement.
How can a company have a written agreement about its own source?
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
Yes, because Company A was contractually obligated to terms in its _written_ licensing agreement. Dude, read some of these written agreements sometime. ;->
I don't know how to make it clear.
That is not what the corporate lawyers concluded, and the company spent many $$$ to comply, belive me.
I know, I believe you. But company A (yours I assume) had a _written_ licensing agreement. Doesn't matter that it wasn't on the software itself, it was for a product from company B, and there were trademarks you had agreed to _in_writing_. Even if they come later, read that original, _written_ licensing agreement.
Company A and Company B had absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Company A bought nothing from Company B. Company B bought nothing from Company A. Company A licensed nothing from Company B. Company B licensed nothing from Company A.
Perhaps this will help:
Suppose you wrote some software, and called it SoftX in the comments in your source code. Suppose you sell SoftX, and use promotional literature using the term "SoftX".
Later, without any relationship between us, (I in fact live in another country and know nothing about you) I trademark the term "SoftX" in my country, which has treaties with your country.
Then I find out that you are using that term.
I contact you, and instruct you that you are using my trademark, and insist that you cease and desist forthwith.
THAT is what happened.
[snip]
P.S. I worked in the semiconductor industry for almost 2 years were the typical _single_user_ software license was over $250,000! You betcha they had references to not using trademarks, and I had to make sure my code and scripts and other custom build tools obeyed them! It sounds like your company made a major oversight and suffered the consequences. ;->
P.S. I worked in Telecomm, where the license agreement for our software was $6,000,000.00 USD.
Mike
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 22:59 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
I complete fail to understand your logic.
I noticed this. ;-> It appears your engineers/developers did too, and too late if I might add.
How can a company have a written agreement about its own source?
You didn't. You had a binding agreement on what IP usage of company B was and was not appropriate, including its trademarks. Company B could be completely oblivious of your uses of even your own source code or other uses of their trademark, until they found out about it. That's when there might be a problem.
I don't know how to make it clear.
Of course not. In your mind, company A's source code had nothing to do with company B's trademarks.
But company A had agreed, _in_writting_, not to misappropriate various IP of company B. Most of these including not misappropriating trademarks, even for internal-only usage.
Company A and Company B had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Company A bought nothing from Company B. Company B bought nothing from Company A. Company A licensed nothing from Company B. Company B licensed nothing from Company A.
What did you mean by ... ???
"Company A did license the executable, for execution only on proprietary hardware which it designed and manufactured."
Perhaps this will help: Suppose you wrote some software, and called it SoftX in the comments in your source code. Suppose you sell SoftX, and use promotional literature using the term "SoftX". Later, without any relationship between us, (I in fact live in another country and know nothing about you) I trademark the term "SoftX" in my country, which has treaties with your country. Then I find out that you are using that term. I contact you, and instruct you that you are using my trademark, and insist that you cease and desist forthwith. THAT is what happened.
Wait, are you saying "company A" _did_ sell the software, with promotional literature using the trademark, to the public?
I can't follow your comments at all. Please use your A, B, C?, D? nomenclature in more detail.
P.S. I worked in Telecomm, where the license agreement for our software was $6,000,000.00 USD.
Oh, you definitely had a licensing agreement that forbid misappropriation of trademarks. ;->
But I'm still confused here.
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 23:04, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:03 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
The engineers gritted their teeth, and did a massive search and edit to modify the source.
This sounds like you had really bad lawyers (shades of gray I know) that acceded to the request of the other company. Probably as a quick way to just settle the complaint. In other words it would have cost more to defend against the complaint than it cost to give in. :)
"principle" I believe is the applicable word here....
:-)
Scot L. Harris wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 23:04, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:03 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
The engineers gritted their teeth, and did a massive search and edit to modify the source.
This sounds like you had really bad lawyers (shades of gray I know) that acceded to the request of the other company. Probably as a quick way to just settle the complaint. In other words it would have cost more to defend against the complaint than it cost to give in. :)
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Scot L. Harris wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 23:04, Mike McCarty wrote:
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 19:03 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
After the engineers complained that there would be a massive editing effort to modify *comments*, the lawyers of Company A and Company B got together, studied the law, and concluded that, to comply with the law, Company A must perforce modify all documents, including non-disclosed proprietary trade secret source, even in comments, so that the now trademarked term did not appear anywhere.
The engineers gritted their teeth, and did a massive search and edit to modify the source.
This sounds like you had really bad lawyers (shades of gray I know) that acceded to the request of the other company. Probably as a quick way to just settle the complaint. In other words it would have cost more to defend against the complaint than it cost to give in. :)
I don't know about that. I only know that we did a "death march". Each department got a rough estimate of how many files were involved, divided them up amongst the engineers, and went at it. We edited files until our fingers were numb, changing DEX(R) to DSCDEX(R) in all kinds of places. Even years later, we occasionally would find one, and "fix" it.
We couldn't just use SED or something like it for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we had files in Word, Framework, and other special formats. Also, case was sometimes an issue.
But a lot of it was assembly source, and that wasn't too bad. I wrote up some scripts for my editor which could process all the files in a directory pretty quickly. But then I'd have to go back and do diffs, and examine by hand that things were ok.
Of course, we had to re-build and re-submit all programs to QA.
Ugh!
Mike
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:39 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:29, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
Yet the GPL explicitly gives anyone the right to fork the Linux kernel into anything they want as long as they meet the GPL requirements. Odd paradox there, given the requirement to retain proper copyright notices...
That has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL. Is is a Trademark on the NAME. Feel free to fork the code and name it something else, and you won't have any trademark related problems.
Can you give proper copyright credit on the Linux kernel without the name Linux? A quick grep through the source tree shows the word is used thousands of times. If there are restrictions on the usage, how do you reconcile that with the GPL requirement that prohibits additional restrictions?
Just for the record, here is the answer for that question:
Trademarks: Use Requiring A Sublicense.
On the other hand, if you plan to market a Linux - based product or service to the public using a trademark that includes the element "Linux," such as "Super Dooper Linux" or "Real Time Linux Consultants" you are required to apply for and obtain a low-cost sublicense from LMI. This is true whether or not you apply to register your trademark with a government.
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:27 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 11:02, David Johnston wrote:
Someone must enforce the trademark on Linux.
Or not. Some software will continue to be distributed without restrictions. Whether it is named Linux or not isn't all that important.
One word: mindshare.
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.
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
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.
Kind of depressing, though. Eventually we'll have to name our software projects names like "Project 2" in order to not infringe... oh wait.. there's Microsoft Project, dang!
Preston
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:24 -0700, Preston Crawford wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
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.
Kind of depressing, though. Eventually we'll have to name our software projects names like "Project 2" in order to not infringe... oh wait.. there's Microsoft Project, dang!
Linux has always been a trademarked name for a while ... which is why CentOS is not CentOS Linux
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 12:37 -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:24 -0700, Preston Crawford wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
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.
Kind of depressing, though. Eventually we'll have to name our software projects names like "Project 2" in order to not infringe... oh wait.. there's Microsoft Project, dang!
Linux has always been a trademarked name for a while
^^^^^^ - Remove the always :)
which is why CentOS is not CentOS Linux
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:24 -0700, Preston Crawford wrote:
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
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.
Kind of depressing, though. Eventually we'll have to name our software projects names like "Project 2" in order to not infringe... oh wait.. there's Microsoft Project, dang!
Linux has always been a trademarked name for a while ... which is why CentOS is not CentOS Linux
I get that. I was just making a basic statement about trademarks. Not Linux specifically.
Preston
Preston Crawford me@prestoncrawford.com wrote:
Kind of depressing, though. Eventually we'll have to name our software projects names like "Project 2" in order to
not
infringe... oh wait.. there's Microsoft Project, dang!
It's the world we live in. No IP reform can change the reality that eventually someone can and will take your trademark and abuse it, causing damage to your trademark. And if you failed to enforce it prior, then there is a real chance that it can and will lose all value.
BTW, I think Linus should have done it back at LinuxWorld 1999. Back then, hundreds of people were looking to license Linux(R). Their ignorance, Linus' gain, eh? ;->
William Warren wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25529
what's everyone's thoughts on this one?
If you bother to read the LMI site, this is very simple. http://www.linuxmark.org/who_needs.html
If you want to register _your own_ trademark which _includes_ the linux mark, then you need a Sublicense. Otherwise, you _should_ call it Linux(R) at the first prominent appearance.
Depending on where you are, your fair use rights may well mean that you don't have to do a thing. Unless you are selling stuff, you don't need to worry. Unless you want to take out a trade mark of your own, it won't cost you any money. If you do want your own trademark, then you will be paying shit loads of money anyway so this extra sublicense should not be a major hurdle.
I will not be altering any of my linux stuff based on this.
John.
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Carlos Arellano -
Craig White -
Dag Wieers -
David Johnston -
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams -
Jim Perrin -
Jim Wildman -
John Newbigin -
Johnny Hughes -
Lamar Owen -
Les Mikesell -
Mike McCarty -
Peter Farrow -
Preston Crawford -
Rodrigo Barbosa -
Scot L. Harris -
Will McDonald -
William Warren