[SGVLUG] FC repository searches

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On 9/12/06, Dustin Laurence <dustin at laurences.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 01:26:47PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> I agree, but I tried to make it clear that as far as I could tell that
> was *not* the point.  As best I could make out they prevented the
> rebuilders from telling the truth, which is that they are rebuilds from
> the RHEL source RPMs.  I believe it is also their legal right to say
> that much.
>
> You don't get your rights if you can't pay for them, that is normal in
> the business world, but in our world telling the truth about the
> technology is mandatory.  To the degree that RH did that, they betrayed
> us.
>
> Let's check.  Hmm.  It's ambiguous.  CentOS's pages are as I describe,
> scrupulously avoiding even the mention of their upstream:
>
> http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=3
>
> Essentially they did 's/Red Hat/prominent North American Linux vendor/g'
> on their entire web site.  The only place I saw that you could deduce
> the source without outside knowledge is
>
> http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=2
>
> which does not name the source exactly but does list the link to the
> source RPMs at redhat.com.  As an amusing aside, apparently Sun donated
> some hardware.  I wonder if that is related to the anti-Red Hat rhetoric
> they used to produce? :-)
>
> Wikipedia mentions the issue as well:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_clones
>
> However, it's possible that RH only went after CentOS, because the
> WhiteBox site appears a bit different:
>
> http://whiteboxlinux.org/
>
> They make it clear that it *is* a RH rebuild.  There are an enormous
> amount of weasel words surrounding the string "Red Hat" however, so
> perhaps the issue was that they got a high enough disclaimer density to
> call off RH's dogs.  The level of disclaimers is actually quite bad, but
> that perhaps is only a reflection of the slavery we've sold ourselves
> into as a society and not a lot more than that.

It may have to do with the fact that I think centOS was started by
guys who wanted to sell support(I think if I remeber correctly, I
could be wrong). The other part is that regular poeple most of the
time can't read letters that lawyers send so they may have overracted,
or removed Red Hat as a form of spite.

> Dustin
>
>
>