From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Oct 8 9:40:31 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from aragorn.neomedia.it (aragorn.neomedia.it [195.103.207.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC41337B408 for ; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 09:40:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from httpd@localhost) by aragorn.neomedia.it (8.11.4/8.11.4) id f98Gdus22331; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 18:39:56 +0200 (CEST) To: Ted Mittelstaedt Subject: RE: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <1002559195.3bc1d6dbd5332@webmail.neomedia.it> Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 18:39:55 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta Cc: Salvo Bartolotta , "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG References: <000001c14fd2$64ef10c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <000001c14fd2$64ef10c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: IMP/PHP IMAP webmail program 2.2.4-cvs X-WebMail-Company: Neomedia s.a.s. X-Originating-IP: 62.98.172.171 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > >Try and imagine how far the world could have gone if such rules as > those for > >trademarks had applied to scientific research. In particular, suppose > each > >and every researcher had had to pay $MONEY in order to be allowed to > utilize > >eg Galileo's ideas, Newton's laws, Maxwell's equations[*], etc. > > > > This isn't fair. We (meaning the UNIX community, collectively) > voluntarily > chose to use the word UNIX, knowing full well that it was trademarked > by > AT&T. (Trademarking the term UNIX was one of the first things that > AT&T's > lawyers concerned themselves with about the operating system) While > it's > a crying shame that TOG is totally uninterested in the success of the > UNIX > paradigm against the Windows paradigm and isn't willing to allow the > term > UNIX to be spread around, we frankly can't complain about it - our > brethern > in the Linux community didn't seem to have a problem coining the term > "Linux" > to refer to their OS. > > Every industry has this problem. Xerox pulled back the term "Xerox" > and > everyone shifted to use of the term "photocopy", Kleenex turned into > "bathroom tissue" and so forth. We already have a perfectly good > generic > UNIX term - "BSD" that we ought to be using anyway. > > What trademarking protects is the marketing and advertising efforts. > After all, how fair would it be for a company to manufacture a tennis > shoe, > slap the name "Nike" on it, and then do no marketing and advertising of > their > own and be able to suck off all the money that Nike spends marketing > their > shoes. > > Consider also that this works both ways too. For example, Sun cannot > use the > term "Linux" to refer to their Solaris operating system, and thus > cannot > benefit > by the grass-roots advertising and marketing done to promote Linux. How > would > you like it if IBM decided to label one of their AIX UNIX releases > "The FreeBSD revision of AIX" and thus start confusing all the newbies > that > are just getting into using FreeBSD? On the whole, I agree. I am not inviting anyone to infringe trademark law, and I don't think it should be abolished. :-) What I perceive as rather annoying is that, these days (21st century), a product of genius^Wresearch such as UNIX, which was born about 30 years ago, can be subject to silly regulations^Wguidelines as those of TOG accountants^Wpeople. Actually, the so called "UNIX" today consists of a few OSes belonging to two main branches. However, TOG may be even right from a strictly legal standpoint. > And as far as Maxwell's equations are concerned, that's patent law, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I strongly disagree. For the following essential theoretical/philosophical reason: Science != technology. Science ~ knowledge (meeting certain requirements); technology ~ [more or less original] application(s) of Science. For instance, Mawxell's equations, Quantum Mechanics, etc cannot be patented whereas any *original* invention/appliance/suchlike derived from them can be patented. At least in Europe. -- Salvo To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message