[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

Theodore Tso tytso at mit.edu
Tue Aug 12 09:15:56 PDT 2008


On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:09:51AM -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
> License compliance matters to CentOS; trademark liability 
> avoidance matters to CentOS; not exposing the community CentOS 
> developers to liability matters to CentOS.

Russ,

I'm confused why it is you care about this particular issue in that
case.  CentOS has never certified to the LSB, and certifying to the
LSB would require the organization behind CentOS to agree to a
trademark agreement with the Linux Foundation --- given your assertion
above, it seems likely that CentOS will never certify to the LSB.  In
that case, why does it matter to you whether or not we include Java to
the LSB?

I will note that there are a very large number of distributions,
including most of the distributions for which commercial ISV's
primarily target, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Suse Linux
Enterprise Server, Ubuntu, et. al, which all ship a JavaVM as part of
their distribution, and therefore have become Java distributors and
have signed various agreements with Sun (and other companies).  Not
conincidentally, the companies behind these distributions have all
signed trademark agreements with the Linux Foundation as a part of
being LSB certified.  So clearly they are comfortable with both the
license compliance issues involved with shipping Java VM as well as
the trademark implications of shipping Java and becoming LSB
certified.

Best regards,

						- Ted



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