Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 04:10:49PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> 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"

I thought you were above deliberately tangling unrelated questions to try
and distract from my perfectly valid point.  

    "BitBucket: GPL-ed BitKeeper clone"
    "The goal of this project is to produce a system compatible with BitKeeper"

Let's try a little simple substitution since you seem to be needing coffee
this morning:

    "Red Cap: a proprietary Red Hat clone"
    "The goal of this system is to produce a system compatible with Red Hat"

Go run those statements by your lawyers, Alan, and then please report
what they said back here.