Many computer users who want to try out Linux or Linux users who only access the Internet via dial-up, resort on buying cheap, Linux or FreeBSD, CDs from CheapBytes, UnixCD, Walnut Creek etc. Most of these cheap CDs are based on well known Linux distributions. This business is extremely common and perfectly legal so far, as it is going on since 1994 without any problems. You could buy, let’s say, the latest version of Red Hat Linux for less than $5. But Red Hat now puts an end in these deals regarding their software.The change in practice came because of complaints Red Hat received about discount CDs containing Red Hat Linux that didn’t include all its features or service options. London from Red Hat says, “What we were finding is that customers were calling us demanding support… we can’t stand behind those products.”
But Jason Phillips, founder of CD seller/auction house UnixCD.com says it seems like Red Hat wants to stop all discounted and free distributions of its operating system. Phillips received a letter last week asking his company to stop selling discounted CDs with the Red Hat brand.
“You cannot even say that the CD-ROM has Red Hat on it or contains Red Hat Linux,” he says. “They say doing this is a violation of their trademark. By doing this no one will be able to identify if a CD-ROM has Red Hat Linux on it unless they buy Red Hat’s expensive boxed set. They think they’ve figured out a a way to discourage the GPL distribution of Red Hat Linux and make it impossible for customers to buy it from anybody but them. But what they are doing is GPL violation.” He adds: “What if all the GPL projects that make up Red Hat tell Red Hat they can no longer use their projects’ titles to inform the public about what’s included in Red Hat?”
This is a tough one. Red Hat allows the redistribution of their software, but not by using the name ‘Red Hat’. The NewsForge users are discussing the issue and both sides have good points: Red Hat is a trademark of Red Hat, but so is Linux. What if Linus Torvalds (as the owner of the Linux Trademark) would not allow Red Hat to call their OS ‘Red Hat Linux’? Another user writes, what if GPL program authors of programs (and owners of these program’s trademarks) included on Red Hat Linux argue that Apache should be renamed to ‘Commanche’ and Python to ‘RattleSnake’ for Red Hat’s official packages as an effort to boycott Red Hat and make things difficult for them, the exact same way as Red Hat does to OEMs? How good that would be for Red Hat’s business?
What really strikes these users is that the discounted Linux CDs are going on forever and by not selling Red Hat anymore, is rather disturbing or at least uneasy for the community.
“Asking from RedHat to indefinitely allow people selling their distribution, and advertising this in such a way that it looks as if RedHat stands behind a deal is simply too much.” a Mandrake Software associate agrees with the Red Hat’s position.
“I believe that these OEM Red Hat CDs should bear a big label saying that no support from RedHat is to be obtained and that’s all” another user adds.
Our Take: My first Linux distro was a Cheapbytes Red Hat 6.0 CD for $4.99. It would be a shame to see these “shops” like CheapBytes losing or damaging their business, when they are so much responsible for Linux’s success. Back in the day, most people were on dial up, they could not download or even burn (expensive CD writters back in the ’90s) a 650 MB ISO image. These cheap CDs helped greatly in the spreading of the Linux revolution. A revolution that Red Hat also eats from its fruits today.
Personally, I do not see the difference between downloading an ISO from Red Hat’s FTP server or buying the CD from a cheap place. If a user is… clueless, in both cases he/she will ask support from Red Hat (which seems to be Red Hat’s concern), even if in both cases there is no support for the freebie product. The user who said that both the ISOs and the cheap CDs should bear a label or notice that no support is included in these versions, is correct. This way, everyone should be happy with this issue. I wonder if Red Hat would be “ok” with the solution though.
I think Red Hat is trying to move toward profitably by increasing CD sales (from Red Hat). However, I think it’s sort of lame when they justify the decision based on user complaints about no support. How could someone expect 24 hour telephone support when they paid $1.99 for a CD? I have no problem with Red Hat not wanting anyone else to sell *their* CD’s but I would have rather them acted like OpenBSD and simply admitted that they wanted money for their CD’s.
Big red ” NO SUPPORT PROVIDED WITH THIS LEVEL”
on the CD and the sheath it comes in as well as the site selling it should fix this problem
This is absurd… If red hat were truely concerned with people requesting support who did not buy the cd, they would include a support certificate in their boxed distributions and require some sort of number and software registration.
This, however is not the case. The support issue is what they are using to push this out. What is really the case is they want to sell more boxed distros. Who can blame them, everyone needs to make money but they should have thought of that before they decided to go into the business of making GPL’ed software. If they want to hide behind a trademark and screw the little guys like cheap bytes so be it.
All that needs to be done is rename the distro and make it very clear that it is exactly the same distribution as those named after brightly color head wear.
I see this as a bad PR move for Red Hat that could possibly end up losing them sales, not gaining.
-Jason
If I purchased a cd with a different name but it was just an exact copy of Red Hat, wouldn’t Red Hat be all over that installation? Wouldn’t I still think its Red Hat software? If I’m stupid enought to think I can get support for $1.99 CD then wouldn’t I be still stupid enough to call for Red Hat support after the installation and the login screen comes up and says RED HAT?
I think Red Hat needs to come up with a better story.
My first distro was Red Hat 5.2 which came with Linux Unleashed (the book). It clearly stated in the Appendix of the book, that there WAS NO SUPPORT for the CD which came with the book. So whenever I’ve got a cheap version ($5-), I have never consider that the product has any support, other than the support of the general linux community.
So to summerise, I believe that the disclaimer should be the way to go, especially when the disclaimer can easily be placed in the install program.
I find this to be perfectly legitimate. I can see where they’re coming from, and those saying the support issue wasn’t a concern, it was probably just the one that whoever was being asked could come up with off the top of their head. I’m sure there’s 100s more. At any rate, i don’t think its unreasonable to ask this of cd vendors, as it requires almost nothing on their part other than labeling new cd’s with a name such as “Red Hizat”, or “Rud Hut” (lol) or the like. I assume this will help them survive. Be glad they didn’t try a shakedown on the other distributions being sold that are based on theirs. That would be the real crime, so lets not treat this as such.
Its matter of respect. Red Hat *does* respect the GPL. They are responsible for many OSS projects as in contrib of money and manpower.
If some of the “small guys” that decide to sell RH knockoffs would more promenently state that its an UNOFFICIAL RED HAT, we wouldn’t be having this problem.
Its not that hard people. Simply put the word “UNOFFICIAL” before the words RED HAT on your knockoffs. If you provide support for it, say so. But if it clearly marked as everywhere as UNOFFICIAL nobodys gonna bug RH.
Red Hat can’t b!tch about it then. After that, if they told you had to stop (which I’m sure they wouldn’t), with UNOFFICAL preceding their hollowed names every instance – – their complaints wouldn’t hold up in any court.
The GPL police need to relax a little and excersise common sense. The name RED HAT is one of RH’s biggest assests, let them have it. If all you free-as-in-Stallman whiners don’t quit whigging out over every little thing, the GPL will be seen as the cancer MS describes.
But no matter the grand outcome in the Linux saga – – I have a feeling I’ll still be using BeOS.
and bad for Red Hat’s Image amongst some of the OSS community member. They should still allow the brand to be used but also ask those cheap CD dealers to sell red hat support as an option when people by CD’s, or people should be able to buy some support direct from red hat (at a fair price)
I understand RedHat wanting to move to profitability by making more money, after all who of us have downloaded every version since 5.x off thier ftp and merrily installed away having not paid a penny?? (I’m guilty as charged), the other Linux distributors have stopped giving away full free copies (SuSe for one, IIRC).
If we all want Linux to succeed then we need to help RedHat and its ilk, make money, and invest some R&D in better software, Gnome anyone?
Same point to Ximian as well. I think Ximian gnome is an excellent product, they take the gnome codebase and give it a great polish, I would hate to see them go under.
Sorry if I went of a tangent, just felt it needed to be said.
Red Hat have always said that Red Hat is a trademark, and while it’s useful for the user to be told that you’re selling effectively the same software that is included in Red Hat’s products (for example by listing the URL where you downloaded it), you MUST NOT imply that you are Red Hat, that you have any way to guarantee that this is the “real deal” or that they are buying Red Hat support. ie DON’T CALL IT RED HAT LINUX.
Normally when generics compete with a brand they agree on a (simple and not too similar) name for the product and all sell it under that name, e.g RH Linux. You see this all the time in the pharmaceutical industry.
Trademark dilution is REAL and it has REAL consequences. Red Hat have to enforce their rules for use of the trademark or lose it.
This was not news in 1999 when Slashdot first reported it, and it wasn’t news in 2000 when they reported it again. If you want to be a news site you need to learn your history, this goes not just for Eugenia (who AFAICT is running this as her own private opinion site anyway) but also for Newsforge.
The only reason I even considered Red Hat is you could try before you buy. Support was never a consideration. How mush more money will they get by making it harder for new customers to adopt their product?
I would have to say Redhat has some valid points. My first Red Hat was a “UNOFFICIAL” distro. Unfortunatly it was not cheap ($85) and only in the small print on the box did it mention that it was not from Red Hat.
So I did find out when I tried to get tech support. Went back to the store and looked at the box I had purchased compared to the Red Hat sold distro and discovered they looked identical in every way except the small print.
I like the idea of alternate companys selling the disks so long as it is very plain that it is not OFFICIAL.
I don’t know if Red Hat is within it’s rights here or not, but it does seem like a pretty important event.
I submitted the story to slashdot, and they rejected it almost immediately. It will be interesting to see if or how they cover this.
I don’t see the big deal here. We just have to come up with a name that means RedHat but doesn’t use the word RedHat. I vote for Mini$haft Linux 7.2.
How about calling it Red Cap?
Red Hat is NOT violating the GPL. As long as their distro is available for download from their ftp servers then they are in compliance. The GPL never said anything about CD’s specifically. It just says you have to make the source readily available. That means easy to get. There’s no definite requirement as to what distribution method you have to use. Red Hat is completely in their rights to do this.
If however they stop you from downloading their distro, then you can Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of Stallman on them. But not until then.
“Unofficial Redhat 7.1”
Personally, I have no problems with this.
in my opinion. Actually, they did a good release, once. It was RedHat Linux 4.1. Now that was almost fine. Then they went downwards.
But, since they have about 50 % of the market, they decided it’s time to make some money out of it. That’s reasonable.
If they truely are trying to avoid calls from people looking for support who did’nt buy Red Hat’s support through official means, then surely they could simply demand that any pressed or burnt RH CD come with a label stating that the CD price DOES NOT INCLUDE SUPPORT.
And also provide a seperate phone number and web site for people to purchase support with a credit card.
I would have thought that getting loads of CD’s “out there”, could spark increased interest in thier product that could fascilitate dead-tree documentation and phone/web/email support purchases at an approximate initial cost to Red Hat of $0.00.
They could set up a phone number that first prompts for either a user#/password to get through to a human for support, or an option to purchase a user# and an option for info on this system and links to supportive resources on the net for the people who don’t want to cough up.
If they are just trying to be greedy, then they can go to hell along with Microsoft. I started out with Red Hat 5.0 but left them at about 5.2 and now exclusively use Debian (plus OpenBSD and FreeBSD). With the quality of Debian and the next major release having a GUI installer, hopefully more people will move from RH to Debian or maybe even start out with Debian. Getting apps and services running and up-to-date with Debian is so easy, it has no peer.
Linus has said that everyone is free to use Linux to refer to the infamous Linux kernel, with the intention that this will (probably already has) dilute the name Linux so much that it is treated as a generic and that’s fine by him (otherwise he would have registered Linux in the first place, and avoided the stupid legal battle to get it off someone else)
Apache derivatives are already asked to carry a different name, similarly for other major “famous name” packages included with Red Hat. So there’s nothing “special” or “different” about Red Hat naming their software using a trademark. Those suggesting that they can’t use the name, or that maybe Red Hat shouldn’t put their name on the product if the name isn’t “free” need to get a grasp of trademark law.
The ONLY people affected by this are those selling “Red Hat” discs which aren’t Red Hat’s official boxed Linux distribution. If you’re not selling CDs/DVDs whatever then you’re unaffected. If you’re selling “RH Linux” CDs you are unaffected. If you’re selling “Enigma 7.2 CD set” (Enigma is the name for Red Hat release 7.2) or some other name then you’re unaffected.
If you’re a volunteer selling cheap distros in NoBroadbandLand and you have printed 1000 CD covers with “Cheap Red Hat 7.2” on them, well sometimes life sucks. Rip the covers out and write a new title in felt-tip pen on the CDs. If your customers know what they’re getting they will understand. Call it “Black Pen Linux v7.2” or something
Next time, read the “So you want to sell Red Hat Linux” FAQs on the distributor’s pages.
If your customers won’t buy it without the Red Hat name, even after you explain the difference (which you are legally permitted to do) then Red Hat’s model works — the customers trust the name, just like when they buy branded goods in other markets. Red Hat own the name, so Red Hat get the money. If you can do better, get a good name and go out and do it!
Personally I trust the name, but I also trust GnuPG, so I upgrade from local mirrors of http://ftp.redhat.com ISOs.
Crimson Cap Linux 7.2, $4.99, no support
How about Blue Hat Linux 7.2?