fjsylvester said on Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 11:54:09AM +0530,:
The Red hat a proporietary software , It is a shocking news
Red Hat is a registered trade mark of Red Hat Incorporated, a company registered and incorporated under the laws of United States of America. You cannot use the name `Red Hat' to refer to any product, including a CDROM containing an ISO image of a GNU/Linux installation because the *law* relating to Trade Marks says so; there is no point blaming poor Red Hat for this. The free software movement is about freedom for software users. AFAIK, it does not concern itself with TradeMarks; and rightly so.
By the way, the word `linux' and the image of Tux, the penguin are also trademarked by Linus. So, he can prevent you from using the Tux image to refer to works modified you. I do not know, and have not verified if Linus has permitted unlimited use of the Tux Logo.
, It uses the linux kernel ? how could they make it proprietary ?
RH uses not only the Linux kernel, but also the GNU C compiler collection, GNU libc libraries, GNU emacs multi-purpose program, the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) desktop, GNU wget, GNU coreutils, GNUplot, GNUmeric, GNU bash, GNU bash-builtins, GNU readline, GNU GPG, GNU bc and dc utilities, GNU aspell, GNU sed & awk, GNU ncurses, GNU sharutils, GNU terminfo, GNU make and friends, and so on. (I will stop with this ...)
Starting from version 8, RH has removed all non-free programs from their freely redistributable CDs. They continue to be free redistributable, so long as you remove the RH logo and other references to their trade marks.
Debian, OTOH, uses a more sensible Trademark policy. The Debian logo, which looks something like this:-
.''`. : :' : `. `'` `-
(sort of a spiral) is freely modifiable and redistributable. The real logo of the Debian project is *not* included on the downloadable ISO images or CDs sold by Debian. See www.debian.org/logos/index.html Note the term `if official approval is given by Debian..' etc.
I think that the issue of logos explains[1] the fact that several distros are based on Debian. (Knoppix, Gnoppix, Lindows, skolelinux, to name a few).
IMHO, distros are perfectly justified in zealously protecting their Trade Marks. There is a difference between saying `this product is from foo' and `this uses products from foo'. The latter statement is required by law of copyright; you cannot make the former statement if you have modified foo's product.
[1] Of course, Debian is much easier to customise, IMHO than other distros. That too is a contributing factor. They distinguish between the several variants of free software licenses; and is technically much better.