ahha. I headn't heard about the RedHat case, it seems they do disagree with me, and the confusion of copyright and trademarks is their fault, not yours like I thought (apologies). Looks like RedHat are stretching their interpretation of the law.
I suppose trademarks could impede Free software in other ways too: One of the benefits of FS is that you can choose any company to get support from, this would be quite a bit harder if companies weren't alowed to mention that they support RedHat(tm).
I don't think RedHats' claims about their rights under trademark laws would stand up in court. Maybe they've caused themselves some trouble by giving their company and there flagship product the same name ;)
Most people can ignore this issue since most don't use RedHat or whatever, but it's a useful discussion for sharing information before a similar case that does affect us pops up.
Ciaran O'Riordan (who is dissapointed with RedHat)
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 01:28:29PM +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 01:00:04PM +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:43:48PM +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:18:02PM +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
I don't see any GPL violations
Surely the restriction on naming is a "violation"?
Nope. Copyright, patent, and tradmarks are all separate issues.
[...]
RedHat disagree with you: http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/guidelines/