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
lesmikesell at gmail.com