29 Jun
2005
29 Jun
'05
5:07 p.m.
Hi Leslie,
They claim to have the authority of Linus, but I'm not sure if he was
consulted on this tax-raising initiative. The Linux Mark Institute
doesn't explicitly say it is run by OSDL, but it is registered in
Beaverton, Oregon (same town) and its site is hosted on an OSDL
server. OSDL is Linus's employer of course.
The idea that free software developers and users have to pay an
organisation founded by IBM, HP, Intel etc etc to use the Linux name
may prove difficult to defend. It may also be difficult to enforce a
trademark with legal penalties in some countries if it hasn't been
enforced previously.
Cheers!
Daniel
I think we
should resist this move on principle.
I think so, too - they claim to just protect the trademark, but
they could surely do so without charging fees from non-profit
organizations. The problem is that they have the legal basis to do
whatever they want, don't they?