How does it affect user groups Re: [SGVLUG] Linux Trade mark ...

Dustin laurence at alice.caltech.edu
Wed Aug 24 06:25:30 PDT 2005


On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, David Lawyer wrote:

> I would oppose it on principle that attribution is a big waste of
> time (including reader's time) and bandwidth.  I think the danger of a
> lawsuit from LMI is less than that of being struck by lightening on
> the way to a LUG meeting.

I am not suggesting we do it because LMI is likely to get nasty, and I'm
fairly sure I said exactly that.  I am suggesting we do it because it is
the right thing to do.  Widespread acknowledgement of "Linux" as a
trademark of Linus Torvalds makes LMI's job a little easier, which means
less money going to lawyers to defend it, which means LMI has to raise
less money from these fees in the first place.  Which is the bigger waste
of time in the long run--a sentence at the bottom of one page with nobody
reads (and if you think that is a "big" waste of bandwidth, I suggest you
try to change the HTML standard because it wastes an awful lot more
bandwidth than that just in duplicated tags and unnecessary delimiters),
or multiple lawsuits in multiple countries just to try to keep the name
"Linux" from being stolen?

And also because anyone who registers a trademark on something they had
nothing to do with just to cash in is a thief and I'd like to make it
just a little easier to take away their swag.

Dustin



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