Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 14:11:06 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011006141106.L13748@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <000201c14e1f$ab91db20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 09:30:47PM -0700 References: <5.0.2.1.0.20011005104743.00a097e0@mailhome.rdg.opengroup.org> <000201c14e1f$ab91db20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] On Friday, 5 October 2001 at 21:30:47 -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > On Friday, October 05, 2001 3:05 AM, Morag Nunn wrote: >> Sirs, > >> You may not be aware that we, X/Open Company Limited (trading as >> The Open Group) > own the UNIX Trademark and therefore enjoy >> exclusive rights to its use. > > Everyone in the FreeBSD community that is experienced with FreeBSD knows this. > >> It has come to our attention that your website contains references to UNIX, > > Simple references to UNIX are not impermissible. > >> such as "FreeBSD is an advanced BSD UNIX operating system..." > > This statement is likely not permissible as FreeBSD has not paid for > licensing to TOG as far as I am aware unless University of > California Berkeley's rights to use the term UNIX supersede. (which > may be possible) No, there's a lot of prior history here. FreeBSD may not be called UNIX, and we're going to have to change this. >> and "...Free BSD (is) a very economical alternative to commercial >> UNIX workstations." > > This statement is perfectly permissible. In it FreeBSD is not being > called UNIX and UNIX is not being called FreeBSD. Many things > besides FreeBSD are very economical alternatives to commercial UNIX > workstations. This statement is almost a verbatim copy of many that > are on the Microsoft website. Please let the core team handle this. This is a potentially delicate situation, and we don't want to annoy her by sending her mail messages from different directions. If you feel there's something important to be said, please forward it to core@FreeBSD.org. Note, though, that we already have a draft letter for discussion which, amongst others, brings up exactly the points you raise here. Those committers reading this, please don't "fix" the first reference. Yes, it needs fixing, but we need to consider just what text we'll use to replace it. Greg -- When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the original text. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html Finger grog@FreeBSD.org for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20011006141106.L13748>