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From: Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: andy <rootstrap@googlemail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Need to pay to use the word "Linux" in commercial products/services!
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:24:42 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1227659082.3744.5.camel@jcmlaptop> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20081125225708.6399ba14@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>

On Tue, 2008-11-25 at 22:57 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> 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.

Personally, I love washing my clothes with Linux detergent :)

They tell me it's also a popular Operating System kernel.

Jon.



  reply	other threads:[~2008-11-26  0:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-11-25 22:39 Need to pay to use the word "Linux" in commercial products/services! 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
2008-11-26  0:24   ` Jon Masters [this message]
2008-11-26  2:21     ` Theodore Tso
2008-11-27 16:52       ` Lennart Sorensen

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