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The GPL is exclusively dealing with *copyright* issues. Trademark is an entirely different area of law and one not covered by the GPL. There is no incompatibility between the GPL and enforcing one's trademark. OpenSUSE - and, indeed, Red Hat Enterprise Linux - are entirely GPL-compliant from this view.
We at Mandriva also enforce our trademarks, BTW, though perhaps not as strictly as Red Hat.
OpenSuse has been offering two versions in the last few years. One is completely open source, the other one has additonal plugins and proprietary software such as flash, realplayer and acrobat reader.
I already made my position on the trademark issue clear on this very thread. The truth is that there are Mandrake and Suse derivatives, so it can be done. A few years back, it was true that things like Yast were not under the GPL, but today they are.





Member since:
2006-05-12
You have valid point about someone put a rootkit in and call it OpenSuSE. But if you read GPL, there is no warranties whatsoever and it even doesn't prohibit you from re-distributing.
Again, is openSuSE 100% GPL compliance? The answer is No.
When you install openSuSE and Mandriva for example. Read the license carefully. You will see where the difference is. And I'm sure you're aware of it.
I haven't paid attention much to Fedora Core, which is a project from Red Hat. I don't think they prohibit you to re-distribute FC, do they? So, why can't Novell let go of its tm name as RH did with Fedora Core?
Edited 2007-04-13 01:02