Thursday, May 20, 2010

Link them not~!

I was on the Scientific Linux FAQ, where a strange Q/A hit my eyes.

Q. Why won't you say the name of the commercial enterprise distribution S.L. is built from?

A. That name is trademarked. The easiest way to keep away from all trademark problems, is to completely avoid the name. We believe that most readers are able to figure out which commercial enterprise linux distribution we are talking about.
I found that Scientific Linux was derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I also found the reason for hiding the fact is, to avoid the copyrights issues by violating the Red Hat license, from wikipedia. I later found that once CentOS, another Red Hat derivative had to face some license issues as they have used Red Hat logos in their site. Red Hat had warned CentOS for 'misleading' the users by providing links to Red Hat site in the home page of CentOS. The letter from Red Hat's outside counsel to CentOS can be found here. So think twice before linking some one.

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