From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: andy <rootstrap@googlemail.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Need to pay to use the word "Linux" in commercial products/services!
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:57:08 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20081125225708.6399ba14@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <2c918050811251439g713c71ddy252c37497b1199b@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:39:27 +0000
andy <rootstrap@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I found it a bit strange that the word "Linux" has to be licensed!
> The "word" is protected under GPL v2, as it is appear first in 1991
> in GPL code. Trademarks and Patents are not allowed in GPL!
> The registration of the name at later point of time, and now the
> licensing terms are very confusing to me, could someone help
> me to understand better please?
The GPL protects copyrights not trademarks. The Linux trademarking is an
interesting question and I know a lot of companies take the view that the
mark is unenforcable. On the other hand it stops abuse of the name for
other unrelated software.
A lot of others of course simply omit the 'Linux' from official names of
commercial projects ;) and I've not seen any attempt to charge licensing
fees to anyone else.
Alan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-11-25 22:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2008-11-25 22:39 andy
2008-11-25 22:43 ` Kok, Auke
2008-11-25 22:51 ` Randy Dunlap
2008-11-25 22:45 ` david
2008-11-25 22:57 ` Alan Cox [this message]
2008-11-26 0:24 ` Jon Masters
2008-11-26 2:21 ` Theodore Tso
2008-11-27 16:52 ` Lennart Sorensen
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