Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you

Stephen C. Tweedie
2003-03-14T16:00:37Z

Hi Larry,

On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 15:14, Larry McVoy wrote:

> Let's try a little simple substitution since you seem to be needing coffee
> this morning:
>
> "Red Cap: a proprietary Red Hat clone"
> "The goal of this system is to produce a system compatible with Red Hat"
>
> Go run those statements by your lawyers, Alan, and then please report
> what they said back here.

I just did, and they said just what I'd expect from common sense. A
compatibility claim is, in principle, just fine.

Specifically, any attempt to pass off something that didn't come from
Red Hat as an official Red Hat product was verboten; but

I would distinguish this from someone who is promoting their own
product, let's call it BillyBob's Linux, and who makes a claim
that it is "compatible with Red Hat Linux." So long as the
compatibility statement is not used prominently in the
advertising of the product and so long as the statement is, in
fact, true, this would likely constitute a fair use of our mark,
roughly along the lines of comparative advertising.

Cheers,
Stephen