From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Aug 27 15:49:54 1998 Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 15:49:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: lwn@lwn.net, torvalds@transmeta.com, web-admin@li.org Subject: Linux trademark Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1519 Status: O X-Status: I don't want Linux to become a trademark of Linus Torvalds. What if he gets killed and one of his kids inherits it, and that kid turns out to be a loser? What if he goes bankrupt and is forced to sell the trademark? What if he gets poor and gets hired by Microsoft? The trademark on Linux should be distributed, just like the copyright on it, to prevent one person from taking control of it. Terms like "Standard Linux" should not be trademarkable -- and already are not! (BTW, I think Mike McLagan is a jerk.) Linux Weekly news says: > Sooner or later, given the nature of this world, some bozo is > guaranteed to put out something under the Linux name that is in no way > Linux. If that bozo can not be shut down, the image of Linux as a whole > could suffer badly. I really think the authority to shut down such bozos is too dangerous to be vested in any one person. In this age of the Internet, surely no one could promote false ideas about a system that ten million well-connected people are using! But one person with the trademark could do a *lot* of damage. It was my understanding that the trademark was invalid when it was filed, and that meant that it stayed invalid. Accordingly, I will not say that Linux is Linus's trademark. Wherever I go, I will promote the idea that Linux is a well-used term that isn't owned by *anybody*. I think Mike McLagan ought to turn linux.org over to LI, though. Kragen (who doesn't like the LSA any more than you do) -- Kragen Sitaker We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might start to think collectively. What becomes of us still hangs crucially on how we think individually. -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web