[SGVLUG] FC repository searches

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On 9/12/06, Dustin Laurence <dustin at laurences.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 12:57:03PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> >
> > Red Hat aperantly did not want that money. So I get there work for
> > free from whitebox isn't GPL great. That is why I don't worry about
> > Red Hat becoming a Monopoly as long as they have a company everything
> > is GPL policy.
>
> I agree with all that.  They *do* play by the rules, and that's why I'd
> rather RHEL be at the top, as it is now, than anyone else.  We're
> *never* going to get a corporate friend at that level of success
> (certainly not publicly traded) who understands and plays by our rules
> better.
>
> They were, IMO very close to the edge, probably even with a toe over the
> edge, when they sent lawyers after WhiteBox and/or CentOS (I forget the
> exact deal) and gave them a hard time not just about the copyrighted
> images but about even mentioning what it truly is--a rebuild of RHEL.
>
> Thinking about it, I have to admit that they were over the line, because
> they stopped them from telling the truth about the software.  That is
> *never* acceptable in hacker circles.  I also strongly suspect it was
> the kind of unfair bullying that proves that the US justice system (as
> with all the others) does not produce justice at all.  I rather suspect
> that anyone with the money to go to court could have proved they had the
> right to say just the plain truth (it's a rebuild from RHEL source
> tarballs), and RH knew very well that they had no legal standing (again,
> this is my belief, but if I'm wrong it would only prove that US law is
> more unjust than I am assuming now).
>

You can complain about the whole copyrighted images thing( you can't
lose copyright) but they did the same thing in the RHL days, against
the cheapCDs type people. But the thing about trademark is that if
they do not protect it they lose it. So if they let people go around
saying this is RHEL they lose there ability to stop other poeple from
claiming there product is RHEL, for commerial perposes.

> But that's still a pretty good corporate record.  I doubt any of our
> other corporate "friends" of similar size could have resisted the
> temptation to attempt to harass them out of existence entirely (in the
> same position of dominance--Novell for example might not even want to in
> it's current market position, figuring that the publicity is worth more
> right now).
>
> That said, I'm glad the end of RHL reminded me that none of these
> companies, even RH, should get a free ride.
>
> Dustin
>
>
>