[Fsf-friends] Indian Express

Arun M arun@gnu.org.in
Wed Dec 24 14:39:15 IST 2003


On Wed, 2003-12-24 at 12:02, Manilal K M wrote:
> Arun had absolutely gone wrong. The OS used is RH Linux 9.
> 
> >  
> > Got the news from Arun,that CDIT used RH 8.0 with some additional packages
> > added and used the RH Logo.
> > Hence,the case.

Ok stands corrected.

But for the issue at hand it doesnt make any difference.


> What do you mean by "packages which looked like RedHat packages"?
> Does it have any base? You may please have a look into softwares like xmms. It has look like the winamp? Is it also not allowed?
> The biggest strength of "Free Software" is  "copy, modify, and redistribute". 

The package had the logo of Akshya project along with the trademarked
logo of RedHat.

Akshya is a no profit initiative. But the CD are distributed for the
benefit of Akshya entrepreneurs. Those are 100% for profit initiatives. 
 
Now, i leave it to lawyers here to interpret where the CDs were
distributed for a non profit or for profit.  

I dont think we can not justify act of one organisation just because it
would have helped us in some ways. Eg if we start supporting copyright
infringements by free software project, how can we defend infringements
on copyleft software ? We are seeing a lot of those these days. 

Then CDIT and Akshya project were informed of the issue, then why did
they chose to ignore ? When we told abt the issue, several months back,
we got very bad response.

As Sajith suggested there may be some one trying to create prob. But a
mistake is made. There are other copyright issues involved, if i
remember correctly. 

arun.





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