Re: Need to pay to use the word "Linux" in commercialproducts/services!

[Jon Masters]

On Tue, 2008-11-25 at 22:57 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:39:27 +0000
> andy <rootstrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Hi
> > 
> > I found it a bit strange that the word "Linux" has to be licensed!
> > The "word" is protected under GPL v2, as it is appear first in 1991
> > in GPL code.  Trademarks and Patents are not allowed in GPL!
> > The registration of the name at later point of time, and now the
> > licensing terms are very confusing to me, could someone help
> > me to understand better please?
> 
> The GPL protects copyrights not trademarks. The Linux trademarking is an
> interesting question and I know a lot of companies take the view that the
> mark is unenforcable. On the other hand it stops abuse of the name for
> other unrelated software.

Personally, I love washing my clothes with Linux detergent :)

They tell me it's also a popular Operating System kernel.

Jon.


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