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

Larry McVoy
2003-03-14T15:04:14Z

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 04:10:49PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 14:43, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > You might want to stop and consider what SuSE would do if someone decided
> > they didn't like SuSE and came up with a pathetic shell script and started
> > describing it as "a system compatible with SuSE". I'm pretty sure that
> > your lawyers would be all over them in about 30 seconds. Ditto for Red
> > Hat, Alan. I believe it is your founder who has carefully explained to
> > all of us the importance of brand. In fact, isn't the point that Red Hat
> > is nothing *but* brand? So how fast would I get sued if I came out with
> > "Larry's Red Hat Linux"? Pretty fast, right?
> >
> > I stand behind my statements. If you don't like them, oh, darn.
>
> I thought you were above deliberately tangling unrelated questions to
> try and make a bogus point. Lets think about this clearly.
>
> "XYZ runs on Red Hat Linux"
> "XYZ reads Red Hat Linux RPM databases"
> "XYZ imports Oracle Databases into Bananavision"
>
> versus
>
> "Larry's Red Hat Linux"

I thought you were above deliberately tangling unrelated questions to try
and distract from my perfectly valid point.

"BitBucket: GPL-ed BitKeeper clone"
"The goal of this project is to produce a system compatible with BitKeeper"

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.
--
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm