An official trademark policy for CheapBytes-type RHL CDs?
Stephen Smoogen
smoogen at lanl.gov
Sun Aug 17 18:12:44 UTC 2003
On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Lance Davis wrote:
>On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Stephen Smoogen wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Lance Davis wrote:
>>
>> >We have always felt that cheap cds are a good way to introduce new
>> >users to different distributions, and some will then go on to purchase
>>
>> Red Hat has very good lawyers who know a lot about the GPL and have
>> spent most of their time defending it when used in products that do not
>> give any support. The main issue is that TradeMark law is very very
>
>I think that you are wrong there, Redhat have used trademark law to
>prevent the distribution of 100% GPL code, and have restricted the rights
>under the GPL of someone who has purchased a GPL product to redistribute
>it.
The FSF has had no problem with this and does not see this as a
restriction of 100% GPL code since the code is very available for
download and the other methods listed in the GPL. Please find another
windmill... one that the FSF agrees with.
>> XYZ place. The people would still go to www.redhat.com and expect it to
>> be supported because it had Red Hat's name on it.
>
>So Redhat should have recognised that as an opportunity to sell mini
>support contracts without the baggage of having to produce the retail
>boxes etc, and it also meant that at least 60% of the increase in their
>user base was being driven by outside companies at no cost to them !!
We tried that. Very few people wanted to pay a second fee because they
had already BOUGHT the product. User base that does not pay for support
but wants 100% support is not a very useful userbase.
>
>We quite clearly say that the software comes with no support.
>
So did CheapBytes and MacMillan... customers expect it and become very
irate when they dont get it because the company that has a name on it
wont support it. After the 20 or 30th phone call in a WEEK of 'I bought
this product to get away from Microsoft, and you are treating me like
them..' and then 'I dont care if I bought it from XYZ, it has your name
on it, and you should support it.' it is pretty obvious that putting a
label on sayinb 'NO Support' doesnt mean much to people.
>Lance
>
>
--
Stephen John Smoogen smoogen at lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Labrador CCN-5 Sched 5/40 PH: 5-8058
Ta-03 SM-261 MailStop P208 DP 17U Los Alamos, NM 87545
-- So shines a good deed in a weary world. = Willy Wonka --
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