Looks like Linus Torvalds is going back to court, but this time he'll be in an Australian court room. Linux Australia Inc. has asked for the help of Linus Torvalds to once again save Linux from being trademarked for profit.
A company by the name of Linux Australia Pty Ltd applied to trademark itself (in doing so trademark Linux). It wasn't until September 9, 2003 that Linux Australia Inc. received a letter from this company asking for their cooperation. Back in 1996 Linus Torvalds had to face a similar case. William Della Croce registered Linux as a trademark in the U.S.A., and soon afterwards started demanding royalties from U.S. Linux vendors for using its name. Luckily Linus Torvalds won the case, and now Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
I don't have any doubt that this problem in Australia will be resolved. If Linus Torvalds could do it in the USA, then can surely do it in Australia. Still I have to wonder how many times similar instances will popup over the next few years in other countries.
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A company by the name of Linux Australia Pty Ltd applied to trademark itself (in doing so trademark Linux). It wasn't until September 9, 2003 that Linux Australia Inc. received a letter from this company asking for their cooperation. Back in 1996 Linus Torvalds had to face a similar case. William Della Croce registered Linux as a trademark in the U.S.A., and soon afterwards started demanding royalties from U.S. Linux vendors for using its name. Luckily Linus Torvalds won the case, and now Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
I don't have any doubt that this problem in Australia will be resolved. If Linus Torvalds could do it in the USA, then can surely do it in Australia. Still I have to wonder how many times similar instances will popup over the next few years in other countries.
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Company X claims their trademark conflicts with someones name usage and sue.
Once, Company X was Microsoft and "someone" was Lindows. Is this much different?
So, yes, this will plague the open source community, and regular closed source companies, for as long as there is stupid people trying to make a profit from suing others like this.
It's about "free as in free speech".
RedHat and SUSE/Novell are companies. And, this may surprise you, but companies ARE about "profit".
Plus, you obviously don't know much about what you just said. Here is a link to the RedHat Enterprise Server 3 (current release, of course) ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/3/ Right of their public FTP servers. Download all of it,if you want. Free as in Free Beer.
It's about "free as in free speech".
RedHat and SUSE/Novell are companies. And, this may surprise you, but companies ARE about "profit".
Plus, you obviously don't know much about what you just said. Here is a link to the RedHat Enterprise Server 3 (current release, of course) ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/3/ Right of their public FTP servers. Download all of it,if you want. Free as in Free Beer.
You can only download SRPMS of RHEL for free, not binaries. It would take an insanely long amount of time to compile all those packages. Red Hat probably has arrays of build servers, most users do not.
Also available is Google, TLDP, and many other free resources for documentation and support.
Now, if you are talking about corporations needing paid support. Of course that is not free. It is not free for Windows, either.
Now, there was a response about the fact that RedHat only supplied the SOURCE for their Enterprise Server... Is that really a legitimate complaint? Seems like a pretty petty thing to complain about....
Because that's what companies do
They seem to be doing rather well too.
Also for other companies looking to switch to linux, having the commercial support of a company is helpful and in many cases necessary.
a frivilous/specious lawsuit. It'd stop the greedy scumsuckers from WANTING to give
bad advice. Not saying it'd be enough, but it'd sure slow down the incidence of stupid
litigation.
Linux is a free operating system. If you want to use it, great - if you want to build on it and sell it, great. But stop trying to claim ownership or other such ****. Is it not enough that its worked on and given away for free FFS?!
http://www.gnu.org/
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
GNU General Public Licence
"...
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
..."
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
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