Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 09:54:20 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> Cc: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990910090822.0479c6a0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909101058510.14497-100000@sasami.jurai.net> References: <4.2.0.58.19990909213518.046fe100@localhost>
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At 11:06 AM 9/10/99 -0400, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: >I hope to god you need permission to use the 'FreeBSD' trademark, and if >Walnut Creek is the ones to fund and forward the legal bitch-slapping >should you use it without permission I only hope that the effort doesn't >hurt them financially and that you have to pawn your computer to cover the >damages. Thank you for your support. >I don't think anyone is telling you that you can't take the source and run >with it. Taking the source and trying to market it as 'Ultra Mega FreeBSD >2000' would only serve to confuse public perception of the 'FreeBSD' >brand, and would be, IMHO, a step back for the actual FreeBSD project. FreeBSD is not the "brand" of Walnut Creek's distribution; it's the name of the development project. If Walnut Creek is the only company which is allowed to use the name "FreeBSD" on its distribution of the OS, then it is being accorded an unfair advantage. This would vindicate concerns that Walnut Creek has an exclusive relationship with the FreeBSD project that precludes competition, and/or has too much control over the project and its output. It would also be problematic if a person or committee could "pick and choose" who got to use the name. This would fly in the face of the BSD philosophy. (It would even rankle those who subscribe to the much more restrictive GPL agenda.) The only appropriate policy is to set simple, straightforward, published conditions for the use of the trademark by anyone who chooses to create a distribution, an add-on product (e.g. "Joe's Nifty FreeBSD Tools"), or a publication (e.g. "The Super Mega FreeBSD Bonanza Web Site"). The permission granted via this policy should be perpetual and irrevocable so long as the conditions in force at the time of first use are met (i.e., no changing the rules after someone has committed the resources required to create a product). >I don't think anyone is telling you that you can't take the source and run >with it. Taking the source and trying to market it as 'Ultra Mega FreeBSD >2000' would only serve to confuse public perception of the 'FreeBSD' >brand, and would be, IMHO, a step back for the actual FreeBSD project. > >Calling yourself 'Ultra Mega BSD2000' or something and having a note that >said "Based on the FreeBSD Operating System." would likely satisfy all >parties. Walnut Creek CD-ROM's distribution simply says "FreeBSD" on the front. Why should Walnut Creek be the only company which is entitled to do this? Any restriction which requires publishers to call a distribution "BlobWare FreeBSD" should apply to Walnut Creek as well. >Why the hell would you want to leach on the poor PR that 'FreeBSD' has in >the first place? There's a concept, not totally alien to the BSD world, known as "giving credit." Also, using the name "FreeBSD" helps to make it clear that the product is designed to run native binaries compiled for FreeBSD -- important if we want to encourage the development and publication of such products. It also ensures that the product's installed base is counted in surveys of FreeBSD's installed base. This is important to FreeBSD's reputation and, again, to generate market share numbers that encourage ports and support. This helps the entire FreeBSD community. Imagine what would happen to Linux's market share and installed base figures if sales of Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, etc. weren't aggregated. Linux would be going nowhere fast. This would be an awful trap for FreeBSD to fall into: it amounts to a forking of PR even without a code fork. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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