Clarification on RedHat's Trademark Policies?

Hitch asks: "My LUG's mailing list has had a thread for about a week now arguing about Red Hat's policy which prohibits calling CD's burned from iso's available on Red Hat's site 'Red Hat Linux' or including 'Red Hat' in the name of the CD in any way. This includes things like 'Sombrero Rojo' and 'Maroon Head Covering' according to some of their pages. And according to some others, you cannot make a CD called 'My Linux' with the line 'Contains Red Hat version X.X' in small print underneath. We have, however, found another page that says precisely the opposite, also on the Red Hat website. I was wondering what the rest of the community's thoughts on this are, and perhaps since I know Red Hat people read this, what the official word is. Primarily we're concerned for Installfests, burning and handing out CD's to friends, and things like CheapBytes. How does this affect them?" According to a recent article on NewsForge, Red Hat has changed their Trademark policy. Hopefully the new changes will make the policy less confusing. What do you think about the new changes to the policy?

Should be posible

[peu]

sombrero rojo podria ser, porque no?

Re:Should be posible

[peu]

even better: caperucita roja

Would it reduce or increase confusion...

[tunah]

... if we called it 'Free Beer edition'?

Don't be abusive...

[Otter]

IANAL, blah, blah, blah.

First, the article Cliff linked to is what I was going to point you to: they're still working out exactly what the formal policy is. Second, whatever the formal policy is, their concern is mostly about vendors and E-Bay sellers claiming to be selling "Red Hat Linux". If you're just distributing burned CD's at installfests or whatever, they're probably not concerned about you, especially if your labels and documentation say that it's a CD copy and carries no support.

I was wondering what the rest of the community's thoughts on this are, and perhaps since I know Red Hat people read this, what the official word is.

Um, have you considered writing or calling them instead of hoping they read section-only Ask Slashdots? ;-)

A solution... my way.

[gid]

But you can try pushing a different distribution at your installfests, and install something I feel's better, more standards compliant for building software from source, more easily upgradable, and doesn't mind cheapbytes selling cd's labeled with their name. I'm of course talking about Debian [debian.org]. I switched to Debian about 2 years ago, and haven't looked back since.

Debian's a little harder to install currently, (that's improving more and more), but any halfway intelligent person should be able to install, by reading the available documentation, which I find quite nice. You just can't be afraid to read and try things. Plus there's always irc.debian.org channel #debian for any other questions you really can't figure out easily without reading through 50 pages of stuff.

One you get everything up and running, installing a new program is as simple as type "apt-get install abiword" or whatever new package you wish. Security issue just come out? 99% of the time you'll be patched by apt-get update && apt-get -u upgrade. You can even upgrade a box through apt-get to a newer debian version. Not more buying cd's again and reinstalling.

I know, I know, it's not really the answer to your question about RedHat licensing, but it does solve the problem, it just solves the problem my way. Which is what you get if you ask me a question. :)

Feel free to either agree or disagree with me, I don't care. Don't like my solution? Try someone else's, no hard feelings.

How much must/can we change?

[Rick the Red]

Let's say I burn some CD's with Red Hat's free ISO files. I am legally free to do so but can't put the name "Red Hat" on them or identify them as Red Hat in any way. OK, so let's say I call them "Durham Linux"; do I have to re-write the files to replace all reference to "Red Hat" with "Durham", or would they get mad about that? Won't people be confused when they slip these non-RH labled CDs into their PCs and are greeted with "Welcome to Red Hat Linux" or somesuch opening screen? Why don't they *want* to take credit for the work they put into making those ISOs?

And what about "RPM"? What do they want us to call *that*?

Because...

[DAldredge]

The don't want to take credit because then RED HAT is stuck with the support cost and pissing off the customer who thinks Red Hat should support it, after all it was sold to them as "Red Hat Linux"

Re:Because...

[Rick the Red]

The don't want to take credit because then RED HAT is stuck with the support cost and pissing off the customer who thinks Red Hat should support it, after all it was sold to them as "Red Hat Linux"

I see your point, but what I don't see is the difference between you downloading the ISOs off their ftp site and you getting a cd someone else made by downloading the ISOs off their ftp site. Either way it's not supported by Red Hat.

I guess the question is really about our society: If someone (a friend) hands you a CD-R they burned themselves, why would you consider yourself a Red Hat "customer"?

Not that it really matters -- I'm recommending Mandrake to anyone who shows interest in Linux.

Re:How much must/can we change?

[renehollan]

Indeed.

I suppose the files that are GPL with "Red Hat" in them are O.K., but not all the content is GPL. In particular, many of the images (and the Red Hat "hat" logo) are copyright (and possibly trademarked, like the "hat") Red Hat.

While at Teradyne, I helped produce a Red Hat derived O/S for a product we were building, and these were serious issues (The derived O/S? "Teradyne GNU/Linux" -- we had less trouble with GNU than with Red Hat).

what to call RPM

[mattdm]

You can call it the "RPM Package Manager", which is what the name officially stands for now.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is not funny

[mvdwege]

Slashdotters get this wrong so often in any Intellectual Property discussion that the one time it is correct, there is noone pointing out the reason for Red Hat's policy:

The name Red Hat is a trademark, and they cannot hold on to the trademark if they don't prevent dilution.

I think it is fine. They are acting to protect a valuable part of their business, their name recognition, and they are doing so in a nice, cooperative manner (no cease and desists yet, I hope?). I think the Linux community in general should support them on this, as it is only fair.

Mart

OpenBSD does something similar

[bbk]

You'll note a lack of OpenBSD iso images anywhere on the net - instead of copywrighting the content, they copyright the actual disk layout. You could theoretically create your own install disks and go through the hassle of making them self booting. It's an incentive to buy CD's and support the project.

Redhat is doing a similar thing here to promote the sale of their boxed distro, and cut down on things like cheapbytes. Their spin is to allow ISO images, but have a renaming requirement.

I personally don't have a problem with either plan, but I think Redhat's will bite them in the butt eventually - who wants a weirdly labeled CD, when the contents are identical? All it leads to is possible confusion on the part of the users, and reduces the free advertizing they get by burned copy distribution.

BBK