Linux Tavern

As reported in this post to the Open Source Blog at ZDNet, the Linux Mark Institute (LMI), which was formed to protect the Linux Trademark from abuse, is now starting to enforce licensing of the Linux Trademark for commercial purposes. Unfortunately, it’s initial efforts are not going over well with some of the Open Source community.

Last month, a lawyer on behalf of the Australian affiliate of the LMI sent letters to about 90 different companies demanding that they pay licensing fees for their use of the Linux Trademark. Of course, this immediately prompted responses that Linus Torvalds is trying to charge for Linux and make a profit.

This is just not the case. As Torvalds has stated, he does not get one cent from the LMI and historically the LMI has always lost money. All they are trying to do is protect Linux from being “hijacked” by an individual or company for their own financial gain.

It’s funny how quickly we have forgotten what once happened before with the Linux trademark. Back in 1994, an individual filed for and was granted the Linux Trademark and immediately began to send out letters to anybody even remotely connected to Linux demanding a licensing fee of 25% of their revenues for use of the Linux Trademark. There was a happy ending when, in 1997, the trademark was assigned to Linus Torvalds.

All Linus and the LMI are trying to do is stop anything like this from happening again — no profit, no gain, just protecting Linux.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Open Source

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Linux News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.