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Subject: Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
Cc: Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb@suse.de>, Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>,
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On Fri, 2003-03-14 at 14:43, Larry McVoy wrote:
> You might want to stop and consider what SuSE would do if someone decided
> they didn't like SuSE and came up with a pathetic shell script and started
> describing it as "a system compatible with SuSE".  I'm pretty sure that
> your lawyers would be all over them in about 30 seconds.  Ditto for Red
> Hat, Alan.  I believe it is your founder who has carefully explained to
> all of us the importance of brand.  In fact, isn't the point that Red Hat
> is nothing *but* brand?  So how fast would I get sued if I came out with
> "Larry's Red Hat Linux"?  Pretty fast, right?
> 
> I stand behind my statements.  If you don't like them, oh, darn.

I thought you were above deliberately tangling unrelated questions to
try and make a bogus point. Lets think about this clearly.

"XYZ runs on Red Hat Linux"
"XYZ reads Red Hat Linux RPM databases"
"XYZ imports Oracle Databases into Bananavision"

versus

"Larry's Red Hat Linux"

"compatible" is a tricky word. Claiming compatibility at least in the
EU isn't about trademarks its about truth. If I say "compatible with all
Ford cars", it should be exactly that.

I'd certainly expect people to say things like "does [xyz] with [app]
whatever" not "compatible with". So its fair for example IMHO to say
"bitbucket is a tool for freeing bitkeeper data" but not to
say things like "bitbucket is a bk replacement" 

And Red Hat is a lot more than brand. The value of a brand is not just
the brand but what it delivers. Same with Bitkeeper as a brand.

Alan

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