Re: [Consortium] Linux trademark - Consortium

29 Jun 2005

Hi Leslie,

...
   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? 
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