Update: Bob Young, CEO of Red Hat Software, has
submitted his
side of the story.
Accusations are flying that Red Hat has their lawyers in action
to disallow everybody from referring to their GPL distribution as
‘Red Hat Linux’.
Robb Sands has sent an E-Mail to everybody on the earth about
his experiences with his on-line auction at Amazon.com. His claim
is that Amazon.com has asked him to remove any references to Red
Hat from his auction. He has forwarded me the entire mail he
received from Amazon.com – the important part is included
below:
In this case, Linux can be downloaded, recopied, and
resold, however, the use of the trademarked name, “Red Hat,” or
it’s “shadowman” logo may not be used to promote or sell any other
software. Please note for a Linux program to be labeled “Red Hat,”
it must come with the original box, manuals and registration and
the software must remain unmodified.If you choose to relist the items, please do not refer to Red
Hat Linux in any way as that would be a violation of both our
Community Rules and the U.S. Trademark Act.
I contacted Schwartz PR (Red Hat’s PR firm) for further
information. They had no comment at this time, due to their quiet
period that followed their IPO last month. This quiet period ends
on September 6th.
Karl Valentine at Amazon.com was able to confirm that they were
talking with Red Hat’s legal department, and that Amazon.com’s
policy is, according to Mr. Valentine, “to respect the rights of
intellectual property owners.” If Red Hat asks (or demands) that
Amazon.com respect their trademarks, Amazon.com will do so. Mr.
Valentine noted that his main contact at Red Hat, Dave Shumannfang,
is currently on vacation, so discussions are somewhat halted at the
moment. He promised to update us on the situation as more
information becomes available.
So, in the meantime, it looks like we play the waiting game. In
4 days, Red Hat’s quiet period ends, giving us the opportunity to
finally get real answers from Red Hat again.
We’ve compiled a list of about 20 questions that we are going to
get answers for from Red Hat. This issue raises at least 10 other
questions.
We’ll continue to cover this story as it develops.
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