[CentOS-docs] Opening of the wiki Part III(?) ...

Mon Nov 3 22:42:39 UTC 2008
Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk>

Marcus Moeller wrote:
> Good Evening.
> 
> ...
>> Courtesy and to have something within the centos space to point to.
>> Plus: Finding the manuals on upstream *all in one place* (like
>> clustermanagement, virtualization and so on) isn't that easy.
> 
> I personally welcome that the docs are mirrored on CentOS.org. Maybe
> we could spend some more time to de-brand them completly.
> 

I don't think that's possible looking at the notice at the bottom of the 
documentation:

/---
Note: This documentation is provided {and copyrighted} by Red Hat®, Inc. 
and is released via the Open Publication License. The copyright holder 
has added the further requirement that Distribution of substantively 
modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit 
permission of the copyright holder. The CentOS project redistributes 
these original works (in their unmodified form) as a reference for 
CentOS-5 because CentOS-5 is built from publicly available, open source 
SRPMS. The documentation is unmodified to be compliant with upstream 
distribution policy. Neither CentOS-5 nor the CentOS Project are in any 
way affiliated with or sponsored by Red Hat®, Inc.
---/

>>> One more thing - I'm wondering about the continued use of the "prominent
>>> North American Enterprise Linux vendor" phrase that appears on the
>>> website. Presumably this dates back to a time when Red Hat was less
>>> receptive to CentOS but that has changed now? Is this something that
>>> could/should be dropped now relations are friendlier?
> 
> You may want to take a look at the Trademark Guidelines, Ch.A. Use of
> the Brand ...
> 
> "The only way to obtain permissions to use the RH's trademark is by
> entering into a written license agreement with RH Inc. ... Absolutely
> no exeptions."
> 
> But maybe we could just ask for it.
> 

I don't think it's about using RH's trademark, but simply referring to 
them by name (who they are) rather than by some cryptic phrase for fear 
of infringing on their trademark. I'm sure this has some history that 
dates back to a time when Red Hat were less enthusiastic about community 
rebuilds of their product than they are now. My point was simply that if 
times have moved on then maybe it's time the language used to describe 
the upstream vendor should move on too?

For example, take a look at the text used on the CentOS home page:

http://www.centos.org/

/---
*CentOS Overview*

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources 
freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise 
Linux vendor.
---/

The homepage and About page are littered with references to "a prominent 
North American Enterprise Linux vendor" and "upstream", whilst also 
containing many links to Red Hat's servers, yet fail to directly mention 
Red Hat anywhere by name. I was under the impression that the 
relationship was somewhat warmer than that now??