free sco unix

[Daniel Staal]

--As of June 16, 2011 11:21:34 PM +0400, Peter Vereshagin is alleged to 
have said:

> CP> UNIX, the name, is a trademark.  We can use it all we like here,
> speaking
>
> Do we need a license to use it? ;-)

According to what I recall of my 'business law for managers' classes: As 
long as we don't claim we own it, and only *referring* to the company who 
does or it's products, no.  It's an identifying mark: You can use it to 
identify.

I don't need a license to talk about Peter Vershagain, as long as I don't 
claim that *I* am Peter Vershagain.  ;)

If I wanted to say that something I was selling was something you had made 
or endorsed, I'd want to pay you for a licence to use your name in that 
context.

Your name isn't copyrighted: Anyone can copy it.  But we can't *claim* it.

> CP> about the UNIX trademark, its applicability, who owns the trademark,
> and CP> so on.  We just can't claim *we* own it, misapply it to things to
> which
>
> So it's just enough to reserve a copyright on this word usage and we will
> have just another reason why we can't claim we own it ;-)
>
> Sorry my confusion, it's just a new thing to me and it seems as absurd as
> those ideas.

It's extremely hard to claim a copyright on a single word: You have to meet 
an orgininality requirement that a single word is going to have trouble 
meeting.

A longer work, a story or a section of code, is much more original, so you 
can take out a copyright on it.  This means you have the right to say who 
can and cannot make copies.  (Mostly cannot...)  But if you give someone 
the right to make a copy, they still can't say that *you* made that copy. 
(But they must say that the words are yours, unless you've given them the 
right to do otherwise.)

(And note that a pure list of facts can't be copyrighted: The phone book is 
often an example.  It's just a list of names and numbers.)

A trademark is a mark: It marks a product as having come from a person or 
company.

A copyright is a license/right: It allows you to control what other people 
do with your work.  (Or some of it.)

They are two very different, if somewhat confusing, things.

Another example:  If you wrote a program, you'd probably want to say who 
can sell it (or give it away) and under what conditions.  That's copyright. 
(Even if your conditions are just 'don't take off my trademark'.)

You'd probably also want people to know who wrote it, so you'd put your 
name on it.  That's a trademark.

Daniel T. Staal

> CP> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]

---------------------------------------------------------------
This email copyright the author.  Unless otherwise noted, you
are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use
the contents for non-commercial purposes.  This copyright will
expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years,
whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of
local copyright law.
---------------------------------------------------------------