Dag,
I think you are taking what RedHat Legal says too literally. Yes, they SAY this is about confusion, but I do not think it is really about confusion. This is about their trademark rights (not covered by the GPL) and what they can do to enhance their revenue flow -- make it harder for the public to know more about the advantages of CentOS.
It's hard to discuss this without knowing what
happened exactly after
the letter was received, but I would have send out a
reply asking for
concrete examples and rationale.
So I think asking for concrete examples and rationale are not likely to help, as asking for this will not cause RedHat to back down from enfocing their trademark rights -- because of the "real reasons".
Rick
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:12:19 +0100 (CET) From: Dag Wieers dag@wieers.com Subject: Re: [Centos] Red Hat Legal Targets
www.centos.org website
content To: CentOS discussion and information list
Message-ID:
Pine.LNX.4.61.0502142101290.921@horsea.3ti.be
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I think the issue here might be the fact that Red
Hat is mentioned
together with links to the Red Hat site in such a
way people might be
misled into thinking CentOS is endorsed by Red Hat
or CentOS is the
same as RHEL.
Now, it would not surprise me if that message got
lost in translation
and ended up being written as it is in legalese.
It's hard to discuss this without knowing what
happened exactly after
the letter was received, but I would have send out a
reply asking for
concrete examples and rationale. It makes common sense that
if you receive a
message that (partly) does not make sense to you,
you ask for
clarification.
It's in everybody's best interest to get rid of any
confusion the
website might give. We do not want people to believe that
CentOS is something
else.
Let's not focus on one mistake and let everybody do
their job and clear
out the mess. I don't think there were ill
intentions being used here,
except maybe the guy who posted this on Slashdot.
-- dag wieers, dag@wieers.com,
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and
unlimited power]
-
Rick Graves