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Red Hat Trademarks
Red Hat 8.0 is out, and already a few gripes have crossed the LWN mailbox.
This latest version has removed
support for Intel 80486, as was bound to happen sooner or later. It
seems they have also removed the national flag of Taiwan from the KDE 3.0
Control Center. This may well make it easier to do business in mainland
China, but it doesn't create good relations in Taiwan.
Then there were rumors that RH 8.0 is not completely free software anymore. We checked into that and found that statement to be false. Red Hat has always included some proprietary software packages in its boxed sets, but the base Red Hat code is still released under the GNU General Public License. Looking at the licensing agreement, we see Red Hat, Inc. trying to protect its trademark. In order to do this the Red Hat agreement asks those making copies for resale to modify files identified as "Redhat-logos" and "anaconda-images" to remove "All use of images containing the "Red Hat" trademark or Red Hat's shadow man logo". To make this just a tad more difficult the license also says, "Note that mere deletion of those files may corrupt the software." This implies that somewhere in the code there are checks to see that the files still exist. So the files must be edited to remove these trademarked logos. However we note that this only applies to those who wish to resell the distribution without entering into a reseller agreement with Red Hat. Why would the Linux giant do this? U.S. law takes a "use or lose it" stance to trademarks. If Red Hat does not defend its trademarks they may be lost. So Red Hat is taking steps to more vigorously protect its trademarks. Then consider what happens when a third party modifies Red Hat 8.0 before resale. If a bug is introduced, Red Hat takes the blame. With the trademarks removed, Red Hat is distanced from the bug. Since Red Hat doesn't know what unlicensed resellers are doing with their code, it is better for them if the end user doesn't see the Red Hat logo. The restriction also slows down those that download the distribution and make copies for resale, giving Red Hat a chance a sell a few more copies for itself. This won't result in big sales for Red Hat, but every little bit helps. All in all, the restriction does not seem terribly onerous. Those who modify Red Hat before resale must edit a couple of extra files. The code itself is free, and Red Hat maintains better control of what goes out under its brand name. Look for a review of Red Hat 8.0 in the review section below, along with reviews of Libranet 2.7, Mandrake 9.0 and SuSE 8.1 Professional. (Log in to post comments)
Red Hat Trademarks Posted Oct 10, 2002 14:23 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link] I know this is nitpicking but.... The name of the company is Red Hat. The name of the linux distribution is Red Hat Linux.
They seem to go after Linux magazines, too Posted Oct 10, 2002 18:25 UTC (Thu) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link] Apparently, here in Italy, Red Hat Italia required a quite popular Linux magazine, which usually ships with copy of the latest distro or other linux software goodies, to refrain from using Red-Hat logo on the CDs and on the cover page (where they announce which CDs are in the magazine).This in accordance with their trademark policy. The magazine was able to ship the CDs, but had to change the name in 'Linux Professional Server'.All this is understandable, given what RH is inversting in his trademark, but still ...
Red Hat Trademarks Posted Oct 10, 2002 19:53 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Ok, I do not see any difference between previous Red Hat releases. They have always had to guard their trademark and would write cease and desist letters to people who abused or made their own 'Red Hat' versions.While the 'defend or lose it' aspect of Trademarks is one part of the equation, the other is in customer service (as pointed out in the article.) I worked in Red Hat support department for 3 years, and there were at least 10 people a week (and this is back when Red Hat wasnt the 'giant' it is today) who would write in for support because they had a Red Hat distro but it really turned out they had some cheap rip-off ahem mislabeled as one producer told the user later. They had not paid for support from Red Hat, but they saw the Red Hat logo either when they loaded or on the box and felt they had bought a Red Hat product. Lets just say most of them ended up being peeved off people.
Red Hat Trademarks Posted Oct 10, 2002 22:47 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link] To make this just a tad more difficult the license also says, "Note that mere deletion of those files may corrupt the software." This implies that somewhere in the code there are checks to see that the files still exist. This is perhaps a bit melodramatic. There are dependencies in other packages (in particular, the desktop themes) on the redhat-artwork RPM. If you just delete this RPM from the CD, you will get dependency failures on installation. I honestly think they were trying to be helpful here, so that CD vendors don't start naively shipping broken distributions. The quote above makes it sound like they've hired a hit squad of evil coders to put time bombs or copy protection in the software.
anaconda-images Posted Oct 11, 2002 3:37 UTC (Fri) by jebba (✭ supporter ✭, #4439) [Link] "Those who modify Red Hat before resale must edit a couple of extra files."It's quite a bit more than that. anaconda-images is part of the installer. To get the images out of the install process, you need to completely rebuild anaconda (e.g. stage2.img), not just change the RPM. This is not well documented. It is a chore...
For info on rebuilding the distro, see:
anaconda-devel mailing list:
Info on the new RH8 comps.xml file:
anaconda-images Posted Mar 9, 2003 21:44 UTC (Sun) by dinopio (guest, #10032) [Link] Sounds like a pain to build a redhat 8.0 distrobut it seems that people have already dont it. Maybe there is a way to make a script to do it for us?
486 Posted Oct 11, 2002 6:56 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] > This latest version has removed support for Intel 80486, ...Oh no, I was just planning to resurrect my old Cyrix 486-clone box
Red Hat Trademarks Posted Oct 11, 2002 10:35 UTC (Fri) by jwharmanny (guest, #971) [Link] This could bring all local 'resellers' who download GNU/Linux distributions and resell them for a few dollars/euros per CD, in legal troubles.Free redistribution of this software isn't possible anymore. SuSE users had these problems for years now; RedHat is also joining the club. Who's next?
Red Hat Trademarks Posted Oct 16, 2002 20:57 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Since the resellers plan to make money, it's not unreasonable to expect the resellers to make the minimal effort required to replace the images.
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