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Red Hat Software Businesses IT

Red Hat & Centos On Name Usage 383

Posted by Hemos from the same-problem-as-a-long-time dept.
Mister Incognito writes "As you probably know, Centos is a free distribution compiled from sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As requested, the distro has any references to Red Hat removed. But now Red Hat has decided that Centos must not even mention their name on the web site, or link to Red Hat, or even use metatags with its name on it. " Well, actually, what RHAT has asked for is that Centos comply with the their terms for using the name; Matthew Szulik has talked about this before, and should be noted that not all of the copyright stuff is "bad."
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Red Hat & Centos On Name Usage More

Red Hat & Centos On Name Usage

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  • From now on (Score:5, Funny)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:48AM (#11667347) Journal
    All occurances of "Red Hat" will be replaced with "Rat Hed".

  • Gosh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:48AM (#11667355)
    I guess from my point of view it is PERFECTLY sane request. I guess Red Hat is here for money, and I wish them well.
    So...it is no much "stuff that matters".

    • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      Does this mean the end of RPMs?
      I mean this seems a little crazy if they can not mention Red Hat. RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. What about the comments in the code that mention Red Hat?
      I would say a little bit reason would be nice here.

      • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Informative)

        by bogado ( 25959 )
        This was the first name of the RPM, now I guess they changed to "RPM Package Manager". Following the buzz arround recurrent names.

    • Re:Gosh... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by matthewcharlesgoeden ( 764440 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:11AM (#11667594) Homepage Journal
      Of course, RH is "here for the money," but that is not exactly why they are enforcing their TM rights.

      Generally, if one does not protect their TM, they will lose their TM rights. That is all RH is doing. If they didn't at least try to protect their "Red Hat," then they would lose their rights to "Red Hat."

      TM protection is generally a good thing for users!! TMs are partially desiged to protect consumer confusion. Wouldn't the world suck if RH was no longer a TM and all sorts of jackasses came out with Red Hat named distros.

      • Re:Gosh... (Score:5, Informative)

        by sepluv ( 641107 ) <blakesley AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:22AM (#11667699)
        TMs are partially desiged to protect consumer confusion.
        In fact the are entirely designed for that reason, which is exactly why RHAT's claims are incorrect.

        A trademark registration only stops others from using the mark as a trade mark (i.e.: the name they use to trade/sell their product under) so this doesn't cover stuff in the software (that's why Mozilla can't sue Microsoft over MSIE's HTTP UA product token for instance).

        It is perfectly acceptable to even change the main trading name of Centos to "RedHat-based Centos" as this is descriptive; they would not be claiming when selling the product that it is RedHat, but just Redhat-based.

        • "In fact[,] the[y] are entirely designed for that reason"

          Oh, you mean TMs weren't created to protect the producer! Believe it or not, there are many reasons for TM protection.

          "using the mark as a trade mark"

          Frankly, I not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that you have to be selling or trading something with the TM to be infringing? What if I gave away a thousand cans of my own soda with the word "Coca Cola" written on the side -- is that OK?! I think you are getting confused with descrip

          • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by EsbenMoseHansen ( 731150 )
            Do you mean that you have to be selling or trading something with the TM to be infringing? What if I gave away a thousand cans of my own soda with the word "Coca Cola" written on the side -- is that OK?! statement.

            No, that would using Coca Cola as a trade mark. But writing "Taste just like Coca Cola" on the side would be ok, since you are referring to the name. Or so I understand.

      • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by einhverfr ( 238914 )
        Protecting the trademark is not necessarily synonymous with preventing others from using it. They could just as easily say:

        "If you want to use our trademarks in this context, but you must mention that CentOS does not come with any of the services that RHEL does so please add the following text to relavent portions of your site..."

        Trademarks get licensed all the time, and if RH was bing smart about it, they would see this as a marketing oportunity rather than a threat to their trademark rights.
    • I guess from my point of view it is PERFECTLY sane request.

      Tell me... How does one properly give credit to the author of a given section of code if you can't mention that author by name?

      Granted, in the case of open source code you don't strictly need to credit the original author, but common practice tends more toward politely giving kudos to whomever did most of the work...

      So, if Recalcitrantly-Euphemistic-Development -House-Abusing-Trademarks doesn't want credit for their work, I would agree with y

      • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sepluv ( 641107 )

        Granted, in the case of open source code you don't strictly need to credit the original author...

        No. Actually you do need to credit the copyright holder under all the free-software licenses I have ever seen (esp. the GNU GPL). In fact, you probably have to to make the license make legal/logical sense. How could a license be given out that did not state who was giving out the license?

        So, if Recalcitrantly-Euphemistic-Development -House-Abusing-Trademarks doesn't want credit for their work, I would ag

    • Are they allowed to mention red hat at all, simply in reference to their predecessor? Just saying "Distro X is based on the Red Hat Linux(TM) distro" is legitimate, isn't it?

    • Re:Gosh... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
      To me it seems like a perfectly sane request that got filtered through a junior lawyer with an insane lust for control.

      Probably Red Hat shouldn't be excessively blamed for the tone, but they really SHOULD speak quite harshly to him, so he doesn't do that again.

      OTOH, it was quite polite. Restrained. That's not the kind of tone I'm talking about.

      After reading the original note I was left with the impression that the words "Red Hat" should not be present on the CentOS site. I was left with the impression

  • Makes Sense, kind of (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space_Soldier ( 628825 ) <not4_u@hotmail.com> on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:51AM (#11667380)
    From the support perspective, it makes sense. A person using CentOS might call Red Hat for support if they see Red Hat CentOS. A lot of people will say that Mandrake started as a fork of Red Hat, but you do not see Red Hat on the Mandrake page.

    • Re:Makes Sense, kind of (Score:5, Insightful)

      by justins ( 80659 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:13AM (#11667623) Homepage Journal
      From the support perspective, it makes sense. A person using CentOS might call Red Hat for support if they see Red Hat CentOS.

      The funny part is, these rules ruthlessly enforced prevent CentOS or someone in a similar position from placing in their documentation the message "do not contact Red Hat for support."
    • Not quite. If I grab a free copy of RH I may _not_ call to RedHat for support even though the box (virtual box, ok) says "RedHat". So - unless you have a support contract bought from RH there is no support and hence the point does not stand.
    • The only mentions of RedHat on their site from what I remember was just to stat that they were based off of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and not affiliated with them.

      So as far as I can see they were not doing anything wrong ... they stated what they were and gave credit for the initial work. Most project would have raised a major fuss if they had not done that!!

  • Whitebox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gadago ( 769295 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:51AM (#11667385)
    I wounder if this also applies to whitebox [whiteboxlinux.org] linux?

    • Re:Whitebox (Score:3, Informative)

      by Medieval_Thinker ( 592748 )

      I am on the WhiteBox list, and there has been some discussion of the CentOS letter.

      WhiteBox has not been contacted by the RH legal folks, and they may be in better compliance.

    • Re:Whitebox (Score:4, Informative)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:59AM (#11667476) Journal
      It would, if whitebox wasn't dead already.

      CentOS formed because whitebox stagnated. On the plus side, it only takes like 5 minutes to "convert" your whitebox to CentOS, just change your apt or yum sources.

  • Copyright != trademark (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:52AM (#11667397)

    Surely even the most casual reader of slashdot knows the difference between copyrights, trademarks and patents by now.

    Who cares about the "meta tags" (actually meta elements) anyway? Search engines ignore them.

    • Surely even the most casual reader of slashdot knows the difference between copyrights, trademarks and patents by now.

      Surely slighty observant readers have noticed that most posters have no clue and mix up the concepts indiscriminately.

    • Patents: A patent gives an inventor the right for a limited period to stop others from making, using or selling an invention without the permission of the inventor. It is a deal between an inventor and the state in which the inventor is allowed a short term monopoly in return for allowing the invention to be made public. Patents are about functional and technical aspects of products and processes.

      Trademarks: A trade mark is any sign which can distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of a

  • This story should fix the problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:53AM (#11667408)
    Everyone just make sure to state that

    RED HAT doesn't want CENTOS to link to them or mention their name because they are offering the same product as a free alternative.

    This way google can index this so when people search they will find what they are looking for.

    Now please copy and paste this post into every message board you frequent.

    Thank you.

  • Really (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:54AM (#11667415)
    My copy of Mandrake still says Redhat when booting. They are an offshoot of Redhat, but haven't really been Redhat for a long time. Why is Redhat only targetting Centros?

    • Re:Really (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mandrakesoft is in France. Centos is in the US.

    • Re:Really (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      Because centos maintains full binary compatibility with RHEL, and uses all the RHEL packages.

    • Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:03AM (#11667517) Homepage
      Why is Redhat only targetting Centros?

      Don't get off on some persecution trip... RH will "deal" with the others in time. They have a legitimate worry about product confusion, as really they are not selling an OS, but rather they are selling support for a spacific distro of a free OS. Confusion about CentOS and others made from RHAS source could hurt their real product, support.

      • Re:Really (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sparkz ( 146432 )
        Well that their tough 5h1t, isn't it? They want to make profit from free software, there's nothing written in stone that they have a right to succeed.

        I don't care what RedHat want, I don't even care too much how much Linux gets used. I care about how secure the majority of internet-connected machines are (because that affects how much crap I get on my PC - spam from trojans, etc) - and the best way for that, is for more people to use Linux (or similar) and RedHat have the best bet of pushing that future, b

    • Re:Really (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kingpin ( 40003 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:15AM (#11667642) Homepage

      Because CentrOS is a "Look! A Red Hat without a price!"-company while Mandrake has their own business model which does not claim to be a free Red Hat.

  • Jesus H. Christ (Score:4, Informative)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:55AM (#11667424) Homepage Journal
    should be noted that not all of the copyright stuff is "bad".
    Hey Hemos, before sticking your ignorant oar in, can I recommend that you learn the difference between trademarks (which is what this is about) and copyright (which is completely unrelated to this case).
    • Is there even a definable difference? They are totally different areas of the law (stopping consumer confusion between products they buy and stopping verbatim copying of intellectual works). I think you will find Hemos is just trolling again. Don't feed the trolls.

    • Re:Jesus H. Christ (Score:3, Informative)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      If you look at the two links Hemos made in his editorial comments, they're both to the same interview on Slashdot, and there is no mention of copyright or trademarks in the entire fucking article. So, WTF?

  • No links? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stevey ( 64018 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @09:55AM (#11667425) Homepage

    Eerily similar to Orbitz [slashdot.org] story covered today we see the following in their email message:

    "Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission."

    So people can't link to Red Hat?

  • Silly (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lorphos ( 194963 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:00AM (#11667485)
    Quote: Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission.

    Good luck enforcing this or convincing a judge about this. [redhat.com]

    Not.
  • This all seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Red Hat's business model for its Enterprise Linux is not selling the software as-is: this simply does not make (very much) financial sense, as the software is mostly given away for free by the creators. This is why Red Hat made the decision to split their product line in two and give away Fedora for free.

    The business model for RHEL is selling support: if anything goes wrong with the product you can simply call in Red Hat and get them to fix it, without potenti
    • RH's support isn't $349/system/year good. Out of the 3 tickets I've opened with them, they've closed 1. 2 I straight up gave up on and found my own work around -- google groups was more affective.

      I pay far less for Cisco TAC on my switches. I've experience much more comprehensive support from Cisco.

      That being said, most administrators I know are more confortable running Centos. It's free, the packages are high quality and they aren't depending on people in India for support. Most of the servers that run l

  • Wrong playbook, perhaps? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:02AM (#11667510) Journal
    "Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission."

    I enjoy the effort that Red Hat's lawyers seem to be applying to this, but I think that the statement above may have simply been a stock, typical IT notion used by lawyers and not something that Red Hat either believes or enforces. I could be wrong, though....

    • I enjoy the effort that Red Hat's lawyers seem to be applying to this, but I think that the statement above may have simply been a stock, typical IT notion used by lawyers and not something that Red Hat either believes or enforces. I could be wrong, though....

      You're wrong. Sending their lawyers after CentOS definitely qualifies as "enforcing."

      Whether what they're doing or not conforms with their "beliefs," in other words whether or not they are hypocrites, is harder to determine.

    • Re:Wrong playbook, perhaps? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Exactly WHERE in the Red Hat TOS does making linking to redhat.com wrong? I read it. Apparently there's no such rule.
    • IMHO, if you don't want people to link to a public HTML page you wrote on your website that you make available to the pubic for free, then you shouldn't have posted it there in the first damn place!

      Why have a public web site you don't allow people to link/see? Any website with such a rule should have their domain pulled.

  • a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor (Score:3, Funny)

    by tronicum ( 617382 ) * on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:04AM (#11667528)
    from CentOS.org :

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

    That sounds so ridiculous now....

  • Something's wrong here... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dink Paisy ( 823325 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:05AM (#11667538) Homepage
    I'm an advocate of intellectual property rights, which puts me somewhat in the minority here. Still, this goes too far.

    Notice where the lawyer points out that Red Hat does not permit unauthorized linking to their website? Since when does using the Red Hat name along with a link to the Red Hat corporate website cause confusion about who you are? Eliminating every possibility of confusion and building brand identity is fine, but this is just stupid.

    Come on, Red Hat. Just because you fancy yourselves competing with Sun, Microsoft and IBM doesn't mean you have to behave more obnoxiously than they do.

    • So why not call your new distro, "RedHat-compatible". Meaning, redhat certified software can run on your new distro.

      In one case, I can see RedHat being concerned with "here is the Free version of RedHat Linux!", they don't want some free-product thinking it is _the_ redhat linux product.

      On the otherhand, one should be able to mention that this new distro is a fork of RedHat AS 3.x. It is redhat-compatible. Also if RedHat is releasing a GPL software(i.e. kernel) you should be able to say kernel-2.4-3.2as
  • Perhaps X.org and some other developers will wish to enforce conpyrights and trademarks specifically towards Red Hat.

    The effect I propose would be this: force Red Hat to remove any mention of what software is included on the box and on its website. Further, when installing the software and running it, RH cannot mention what software is running, nor can it claim title to the work. It would make them lose a large amount of recognizable software and therefore lead to sales losses.

    If RH is simply customizing
    • More to the point, how about Linux. The trademark is owned by Linus (although whether it's still enforceable is debatable). What Red Hat ship is not a Linux kernel, but a kernel derived from the Linux kernel, which should be compatible with the Linux kernel. It would be interesting if Linus decided to revoke their right to use the trademark Linux in their product name...

  • I Don't Understand The Need For Centos (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theManInTheYellowHat ( 451261 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:09AM (#11667576)
    Or Whitebox for that matter. If you have the need for "enterprise" class utility, then why would you not pay for it from the source and get the support.

    To me "enterprise" is a large organization with lots of users needing lots of services somewhere close to 24/7. This means some amount of money is on the line, and thus should be done professionaly.

    Now if they tried to make an "enterprise" Fedora that would be an interesting project. But just recompiling RHEL sources into a "new" distro seems to cheapen "enterprise".

    • Re:I Don't Understand The Need For Centos (Score:5, Insightful)

      by erikharrison ( 633719 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:12AM (#11667617)
      The niche for Centos and Whitebox is pretty small, but real. It's not enough to have a good support contract, there is also the faith that a good support contract is most profitable if you ship a product that rarely has failure. If what you need is not nine nines of availability, but maybe seven and a half, Whitebox is for you. Can't afford a support contract, but want an enterprise proven stable OS? Then Whitebox and Centos are currently as close as you come. Until OpenSolaris comes out.
      • Can't afford a support contract, but want an enterprise proven stable OS?

        Never mind that, how about an OS where software versions don't change all the freaking time when you try to keep everything patched and secure? Debian realizes this fairly well with their stable/unstable/testing paradigm, Fedora just doesn't. The RHEL clones are a good option for the people who want an rpm-based distro roughly equivalent to debian stable.
      • "Can't afford a support contract, but want an enterprise proven stable OS? Then Whitebox and Centos are currently as close as you come. Until OpenSolaris comes out."

        OpenSolaris might be a ways away. But if you want an enterprise proven stable OS, that you don't have to pay for Solaris 10 is distributed freely, even though it's not open source. It's what most people would want. It's provided for use at no cost. Most people don't care about having the source.

    • Or maybe you just want to stay off the 6 month Fedora upgrade treadmill...
    • Red Hat's support isn't even "enterprise" in the same way Sun Microsystem's support is.

      I would rather use CentOS and have a community of tecnical people who actually use and built the OS at my disposal.

    • Re:I Don't Understand The Need For Centos (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:25AM (#11667751)
      I build linux clusters and compute farms for biotech and pharma customers.

      Redhat is often required due to the demands of certain commercial scientific software.

      We need distros like Centos and Tao because we need a stable OS that has a multi-year lifespan. As others mentioned -- an every-6-months upgrade for Fedora Linux is not cool when you have production systems doing heavy science 24/7.

      If Redhat had a sane pricing model for scientific computing I'd gladly pay for it. As it stands though their cheapest WS line is for low end X86 systems. If you have a cluster of opterons or boxes with more than 4GB RAM (very common) you are forced to go with the enterprise line which costs thousands of dollars per machine each and every year. This is not feasable even for enterprise customers (unless they have a site license with Redhat).

      This is why over the past year or two I've started deploying clusters based on Suse and Centos.

      my $.02

    • Re:I Don't Understand The Need For Centos (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because you want to run Oracle software, and Oracle software is only certified on RHEL and SuSE enterprise server.

      I know developers who want to install Oracle at home to learn about using it, i know dba's who want to install it to learn about the new features of the RDBMS.

      Right now if you want to do that, you'd have to buy RHEL. If oracle would test against fedora or something similar, i wouldn't need CentOS.
    • What I envision as the target user for WBEL is someone looking for what Red Hat Linux used to be, i.e. somewhere between where Fedora and RHEL are now. Longterm version stability and errata support without the annual per processor support contracts.

      Which is exactly what I wanted, a disto that was "RedHat" enough that all the years of knowledge of the way they configure a UNIX/Linux box would still be valid, covered by errata long enough I wouldn't be forever rolling new versions out, but without the suppo
  • At risk of stating the obvious (which unfortunately probably needs doing on /.), a trademark registration only stops others from using the mark as a trade mark (i.e.: the name they use to trade/sell their product under) so this doesn't cover stuff in the software (that's why Mozilla can't sue Microsoft over MSIE's HTTP UA product token for instance).

    It is perfectly acceptable to even change the main trading name of Centos to "RedHat-based Centos" as this is descriptive; they would not be claiming when sel

  • Are they trying to enforce trademarks which are displayed when you use the software? I'm not a GPL fanatic but I think they ought to lose the right to enforce those trademarks if they're included in a GPLed srpm.

    Enforcing the trademarks on bits of the CentOS website or documentation is obviously another matter.

  • linking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )
    Sayeth the lawyers,

    Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission.

    Uh, where has any law or court opinion even suggested that one needs permission to link to a web site?

    No copyright or trademark law lets Red Hat restrict me from making factual statements like, "Red Hat's web site is www.redhat.com", any more that they can prevent me from stating "Red Hat's phone number is 1-888-REDHAT1" or "Red Hat's address is 1801 Varsity Drive, Raleigh, NC

  • Anyone care to share their experiences with these RH clones? How accurate a clone is it?
    • I've used WB & Tao, and yeah, they are essentially exactly the same as RH. Beyond the names, you'd be doing well to tell the difference at all.
    • Ultimately they are extremely accurate as "clones" because there is essentially very little change between the RHEL releases and the clones. RedHat are legally required to release the source code to everything they release under the GPL (which is virtually everything). The clone distros then take the source RPMs from the RH servers, strip out all the trademarked text and graphics, and compile it for use with other distributions.

      I personally have been using CentOS on around a dozen servers for 6 months or s

  • Ironic - see Fedora Project vs Red Hat (Score:4, Informative)

    by illtud ( 115152 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:21AM (#11667694)
    Ironic that Red Hat seems to miffed about people using their name. They're not so bothered that they stole The Fedora Project's [fedora.info] name when they changed the name of their 'home' distro. Red Hat proceeded to apply for a trademark [redhat.com] on the name which would preclude the name being used by the Feodra Project which predates their trademark application by a number of years.

    Read the Fedora Project's statement here [fedora.info].

    • Re:Ironic - see Fedora Project vs Red Hat (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Elranzer ( 851411 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:30AM (#11668462) Homepage
      They were not inspired to use the name "Fedora" from Cornell/Virginia's project. I'm pretty sure they actually took the name from the "other" Fedora Project, fedora.us [fedora.us] which was an "extras" repository project to supplement RedHat 7-9, and recieved RedHat sponsorship in exchange for running the entire "home version" distro of RedHat instead of just supplementing it. This was so RedHat could themselves focus solely on Enterprise (pay) software. The Fedora.us project is now located at fedoraproject.org [fedoraproject.org] although they still maintain their old URL. Interestingly, this Fedora Project is also run by a university, Hawaii in this case. In all cases I'd say they're the "real" Fedora Project, and that Cornell/Virginia's choice of names was just unlucky.
  • Not too long ago MS "asked" everyone to remove the word "Windows" from all the product names. Like "Windows Commander" becoming "Total Commander" and similar. Great minds think alike, eh? Is it the natural way of things that when you become very rich and famous you are obliged to become an asshole?
  • Dogs scrapping over a piece of meat is what it looks like. RH and the 'first tier' Linux vendors want to differentiate themselves from fat goofy weird trekkie Linux (fgwtL) vendors which want to differentiate themselves from 'fake/newbie' Linux vendors like Linspire and so on. In the meantime SCO wants to litigate with everyone and maybe just maybe RH has either swung or thinks it can swing a deal with SCO which would require them to divorce themselves from fgwtL and all the others, except EyeBeeEm.

    It's re

  • ISPs using Red Hat Enterprise name for CentOS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Good for Red Hat. They have a problem with some ISPs and the RHEL name already.

    RHEL is a selling point -- and was for me when I checked out a new web host company. Yet, the ISP who promoted RHEL on the front page installed CentOS . While the bits are the same, I did feel a bit miffed. I'll still use the ISP (they've done a good job otherwise) though it would have made a difference if I were shopping for them before.

    I tell my clients that the operating system is a "conservative server focused versio

    • If the ISP claimed to run RHEL but really run CentOS, then they are fraudulently representing to you that they have Red Hat support available to quickly fix any problems, and they don't.

  • There is truly nothing like free advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by deadline ( 14171 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:30AM (#11667799) Homepage
    Show of hands. How Many people knew about CentOS before this story? How many do now? If this gets picked up by other news outlets, CentOS will probably get rather well known.
    • /me raises hand

      Although those looking for a FREE ALTERNATIVE to RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX should also consider Scientific Linux, Taolinux, and Whitebox Linux.

      That is all.

  • RedHat RedHat (Score:2, Interesting)

    by flibberdi ( 800264 )
    RedHat, RedHat and RedHat. Earlier RedHat RedHat RedHat, this was in reply to RedHat RedHat RedHat!!


    BWAHAAAA

    OK, try this

    RedHat [redhat.com]

    RedHat [redhat.com]

    RedHat [redhat.com]

    BWA HA HA HAAA YOU CANT STOP ME... RedHat RedHat RedHat RedHat .....
  • How is it that a company could be trying to "enforce" trademark recognition but obviously has released the trademark into public domain through its own contributions?

    centOS or Whitebox for that matter are not doing anything but using srpms as released by RedHat to build a binary distribution based off of redhat linux.

    If RedHat had wanted to keep its trademark viable it sould have named the product differently. RedHat should have been the company name and RedHat "fedora" or "red cap" or some other name sho

    • How is it that a company could be trying to "enforce" trademark recognition but obviously has released the trademark into public domain through its own contributions?

      Going beyond the pure legal issue you mention, which I'm not sure about, you have to wonder why they think having their trademark diluted (ala Kleenex Tissues) would hurt them. If everyone in the new user community were to associate "Redhat" with "linux" and type www.redhat.com into their browser first thing, that would be... bad?

      Maybe, but I

  • I laugh at Red Hat's lawyers (Score:3, Informative)

    by Quattro Vezina ( 714892 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @10:45AM (#11667952) Journal
    Deep linking is perfectly legal [wired.com].

    Looks like Red Hat [redhat.com]'s plans are going straight down the toilet.
  • Do they really want to make everybody type http://www.redhat.com in the browser address bar? That is too much work for most people.

  • Truthmark (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:38AM (#11668554) Homepage Journal
    Red Hat can't stop Centos from stating which distro they're derived from. It's effectively required by the GPL, so the source inheritance can be traced. They can stop it in the subjective "advertising use", but documenting the fact is protected.

  • Our Position (Score:5, Informative)

    by KainX ( 13349 ) <mej.eterm@org> on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:58AM (#11668753) Homepage
    I would like to clarify the position of the cAos Foundation [caosity.org], of which CentOS [centos.org] is a project, on the web site matter.

    First, I'll refer to the following summary (taken from this post [caosity.org]):


    First let me say that I appreciate your feedback and your candor.
    Your comments are well received.

    However, the situation as it currently stands is that we do not have
    legal counsel to advise us on what we can or cannot say on our web
    site, nor do we have the financial resources to pay for such.
    Furthermore, RedHat is required by law to protect their trademarks or
    risk losing them, and they do have valid concerns about trademark
    dilution.

    RedHat has always been very generous with their code and open with
    their processes and resources. I would point out that their primary
    competition in the commercial RPM-based distribution space is not
    nearly as generous or cooperative. While we may not agree with
    everything they have said, we have an obligation to respect their
    trademarks and their role in helping to create what we are and what
    CentOS is.

    The bottom line is this: The references to Red Hat and any other
    marks they own MUST be removed from the web site and will remain so
    indefinitely. We want to be clear about what CentOS is and what it
    offers, but until we can secure legal counsel to help us balance our
    interests with those of RedHat and other companies in this space, we
    must err on the side of caution. That means if we're not sure we can
    say it, we don't say it.

    This course of action, while perhaps not the ideal solution from a
    purely Libertarian point of view, is correct and in the best interests
    of the project and the community at this time. We gain nothing by
    hurting, diluting, or pissing off RedHat, nor would we want to. And
    we certainly gain nothing turning this into a big legal fiasco.

    Please understand that this is right and necessary at this point in
    time, and support Donavan and the rest of the CentOS team in following
    through on what we've asked of them.

    Second, I want to reiterate that the RH legal team has been extremely patient and helpful. They pointed out a number of legitimate concerns, and we continue to work with them to make sure our web site is in compliance with their trademark usage policies.

    Third, as we (and our projects) continue to grow and develop, we will be in need of legal counsel. If you are willing to provide pro bono legal advice to the Foundation [caosity.org] and its member projects, please contact us (legal ~a~t~ caosity ~d~o~t~ org).

    And finally, I would like to point out that projects like CentOS [centos.org] could not exist without the continued support of RedHat, and we thank them for their continued efforts to find the right balance between running a for-profit business and helping the non-profit community.

    Regards,
    Michael Jennings
    The cAos Foundation [caosity.org]

  • Confusion real (Score:4, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:51PM (#11669313)
    This issue of centOS and RHEL confusion is real.

    Twice now I've picked up hosting plans for myself or others that claim they come with RHEL (aka, a subscription to redhat's network of up2date servers, and redhat software).

    In these two cases when I actually run up2date I've noticed they are picking up packages from centOS. My complaint is simply that I want to be the one to deceide between centOS and RHEL, and am capable of evaluatiing their similarities and differences.

    Redhat gives away in open source form a really solid product. The one thing they ask is that folks not connect their derivative products back to them. Given their generally clean playing in the open source world, I don't begrudge them this that much actually.

  • Here's the clencher (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @02:52PM (#11670878) Journal
    CentOS is not just "like" RedHat - it literally *IS* RedHat Linux! Same sources, same compile tree.

    The /ONLY/ thing different is the manufacturing date! (compile time)

    Can you imagine the SHITFIT that Coca-Cola would have if there was a competing product called "Co-sola - Coca-Cola derived soda"??? I mean, artificial diamond production would quintuple overnight, and the Men's Wearhouse would have a run on all the suits needed to cover all the lawyers' bodies involved...

    RedHat is being very, very good about this. And it's a good thing, too - RedHat would lose all future business from me (and very nearly did with their RHL -> Fedora switcharoo) if they did anything to actually stop CentOS or WhiteBox.

    But, the name is theirs, and they have every right and responsibiltiy to protect it as legally required.
    • > CentOS is not just "like" RedHat - it literally *IS* RedHat Linux! Same sources, same compile tree.

      Soooo? Have you heard of GPL?

      > Can you imagine the SHITFIT that Coca-Cola would have if there was a competing product called "Co-sola - Coca-Cola derived soda"???

      Last time I checked their recipe was a trade secret (i.e. not even patented); if you managed to steal it and market a "Co-Sola - Coca-Cola-Derived Soda", you'd help them to bust you for theft and jail you. You could also be sued for misusi

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