Re: [Fsfe-uk] Red Hat and the DMCA

[Philip Hands]

At Sat, 19 Oct 2002 22:31:21 +0100,
Alex Hudson wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 09:48:12PM +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > (re John Winters)
> > Although http://www.cheeplinux.co.uk/ does ship Cheep Linux 8.0
> > without any qualms AFAICT.
> > 
> > Maybe John's just being more cautious than CheepLinux, perhaps
> > justifiably so.

I think John may have taken a decision that if RH are going to be
painful about it, he doesn't feel any great temptation to do their
marketing for them --- He could almost certainly redistribute the
ISOs after blanking out the logos, and removing the trademarks in a
few places, but when I was talking to him about it, he seemed pretty
fed up that they were not positively encouraging him, given that
that's where a lot of the people that end up paying for RHCE courses,
and consultancy probably first try GNU/Linux.

[...]

> I think this is a fairly serious problem, although I don't see any 
> obvious way out for RH at the moment. The trademark thing has been
> rumbling on for a while, but I suppose the way to do it would be the
> way Debian handle it: you have official logos, and you have unofficial
> logos. The official ones cannot be used by redistributers, for many
> of the same reasons, because they are used as marques, to show that 
> they are 'the real thing'.

That's not actually the case --- The Official logos are restricted to
things officially endorsed by the project, so if you redistribute CDs,
as long as they are MD5SUM matching copies of the officially released
CDs you can put the official logo on them, if you feel like it.

If you just want to say that you like Debian on your home page, you
use the unofficial logo.

The fact that most people prefer the unofficial logo means that the
official one doesn't get as much use as it might otherwise do, but
we're certainly not trying to do anything as silly as insisting that
people unpack the CDs, remove/replace the logos and then rebuild them,
before redistributing.

Actually, the fact that you even said "redistributors" in conjunction
with Debian shows that you've missed the point somewhat --- given that
Debian does not distribute anything (except online by means of the
mirror network) means that all physical Debian CDs are produced by
entities other than Debian, so there is no distributor/redistributor
distinction.

> This is analoguous to 'trademarks' - marks
> by which you trade, a sign which a customer can see and know that 
> they are dealing with the 'official' merchandise.
> 
> The main difference between what Debian have done and what RedHat have
> done is that the marques are protected differently - use of the official
> Debian is controlled by copyright; whereas the RH one is being 
> controlled as a registered trademark. Perhaps it is this difference that
> is causing the trouble.

AFAICS they could easily license John (and either selected others, or
all and sundry) to use the logo, only as it already exists in files on
exact copies of the officially released CDs, without diluting the
strength of their trademark protection.

It seems that they simply choose not to, presumably because someone
who doesn't understand about Free Software is thinking they can use
their market position to squeeze more money out of the CD sales.  It
strikes me as the sort of thing that will bite them in the not too
distant future.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
Say no to software patents!  http://petition.eurolinux.org/

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