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Anyone familear with the Linux TOS?

HeXploiT

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
As we all know Linux follows a different set of TOS agreements than most other software & OS's.
A scenario popped into my head that got me thinking.
What if a major game distributor released a new high profile pc game and the decision was made to push the game on Unix based operating systems(Linux) first & foremost.
Can the they do this without having to pay anyone royalties for using the "Linux" brand name?
Would this require all the same legal red tape that using the word "Windows" does?

What would be the legal implications/possibilities here?
 
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
 
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
Click to expand...

I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
 
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
Click to expand...

I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
Click to expand...

The term Linux does NOT relate to how the term Windows relates to the respective software. Linux is just a kernel, if you want a usable operating system you still need userland tools. Windows is a operating that uses the NT kernel.
 
Originally posted by: Crusty
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
Click to expand...

I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
Click to expand...

The term Linux does NOT relate to how the term Windows relates to the respective software. Linux is just a kernel, if you want a usable operating system you still need userland tools. Windows is a operating that uses the NT kernel.
Click to expand...

Actually it DOES correlate.
Windows nt4 is to windows 2000 is to windows xp...they're all based on essentially the same kernel.
My point is that the kernel is the OS.

Anyway you know if we take this any further it's going to get philosophical and that is not the point of this thread.
 
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: Crusty
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
Click to expand...

I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
Click to expand...

The term Linux does NOT relate to how the term Windows relates to the respective software. Linux is just a kernel, if you want a usable operating system you still need userland tools. Windows is a operating that uses the NT kernel.
Click to expand...

Actually it DOES correlate.
Windows nt4 is to windows 2000 is to windows xp...they're all based on essentially the same kernel.
My point is that the kernel is the OS.

Anyway you know if we take this any further it's going to get philosophical and that is not the point of this thread.
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand. Does Linus write Gnome? How about KDE? The point is that Windows refers to the WHOLE PACKAGE. Linux refers to the KERNEL.

It's simple, it's not philosophical.

 
Originally posted by: Crusty
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: Crusty
Originally posted by: Perry404
Originally posted by: sourceninja
Linux has not terms of service. You might be thinking of the license linux is published under. This is different then a TOS.

The name 'Linux' is a trademark and to officially use it you must pay for a license. However, Linus has stated that they will not go after anyone who chooses not to buy a license. He did warn that if you created Perry Linux and did not register, and another party registered Perry Linux then they could legally sue you for violating their trademark. The reason Linus registered Linux as a trademark is to prevent some bad business men from doing the same and suing everyone who made linux distributions. He makes no money (and infact the org he setup to handle this operates at a loss).

This however is again not a terms of service. You could take the linux source code and call it NinjaOS 4.7 and nobody can do a damn thing about it. As long as you make the source code available as specified in the GPL license.

Finally, there is no Linux operating system. It simply does not exist. if a company just put a 'runs on linux' sticker on a game it would be meaningless. There are so many different operating systems (or distributions) that use the linux kernel at its base that you wouldn't know where to start. More likely a company would need to say "Made for Ubuntu Linux" or "Designed for Debian". That would give you some insight as to which operating system the game was designed to run on.

I suggest you do some reading into what the GPL is and also maybe some trademark law. That will help you understand more about how linux is licensed for use.
Click to expand...

I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
Click to expand...

The term Linux does NOT relate to how the term Windows relates to the respective software. Linux is just a kernel, if you want a usable operating system you still need userland tools. Windows is a operating that uses the NT kernel.
Click to expand...

Actually it DOES correlate.
Windows nt4 is to windows 2000 is to windows xp...they're all based on essentially the same kernel.
My point is that the kernel is the OS.

Anyway you know if we take this any further it's going to get philosophical and that is not the point of this thread.
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand. Does Linus write Gnome? How about KDE? The point is that Windows refers to the WHOLE PACKAGE. Linux refers to the KERNEL.

It's simple, it's not philosophical.
Click to expand...

Alright whatever you win lol. :laugh:
 
Originally posted by: Perry404

Actually it DOES correlate.
Windows nt4 is to windows 2000 is to windows xp...they're all based on essentially the same kernel.
My point is that the kernel is the OS.

Anyway you know if we take this any further it's going to get philosophical and that is not the point of this thread.
Click to expand...

Good luck running Far Cry 2 on nt4. They are not even close to the same thing.

The same thing happens in Linux. Each distro has their own kernel version, their own libc version, their own gnome/kde version etc. They are not necessarily compatible.
 
Originally posted by: Perry404
[
I know it was once termed copyleft law.
Also saying there is no "linux" is like saying there is no "windows".
Linux is Unix and it's the kernal that determines what software or game will or will not run. Basically this means if ID creates a game to run on the latest version of Ubuntu then it is likely that it will run on multiple flavours of "Linux".

Anyway thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge what it might look like if(when) this scenario happens.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.

Here's a simple example.

glibc.

If distributions use different glibc libraries then software compiled for one will not run on the other. This is why moving from gcc 3.5 to gcc 4 was such a headache. Further more, what if your linux distro is gnome only and chooses not to ship and qt libraries at all? I ran gentoo for years without any kde/qt software on my machine. If software required qt it simply would not run.

Lets look at it another way, lets look at Xwindows. When we made the switch from xfree to xorg we had some distros using xfree that had good drivers and some using xorg that did not have good video drivers. This happened even recently with the newest ubuntu. At the alpha stage nvidia 3d drivers simply would not work. At one point there was even two competing compositing solutions and caused software incompatibility.

And one last way to look at it. How you distribute the software can control what it will run on. Are you going to ship rpm files? deb files? source code? write your own installer?

How are you going to do dependancy resolution to make sure I have all the right libraries installed. If I do not are you going to ship those with your software and possibly break my distribution? Or are you going to install them via my distributions package system? Where are you going to install your software? /usr? /usr/local? /opt? Are you sure those locations won't write over any libraries I might already have installed?

This is why modern linux distributions have their own package systems for installing software. Even in very closely related distributions such as ubuntu and debian it is very risky to take software packaged for one and install it on the other. They are simply different operating systems.

So again, there is no linux operating system. You can't get support for linux. You can't ask questions about what is wrong with your linux install. No one could help you. You have to ask what is wrong with your suse 11 install, or your ubuntu 8.04 install or your fedora 10 install. Why? Because they use different systems, libraries, and software.

Unix is not unix. It varies wildly from distro to distro. Try using solaris and ubuntu side by side and you will see the difference. Just try to install patches on both, write init scripts for both or compile software on both. Read the best practices guidelines on both. See if you can get your kde software to run on my usb stick install without X windows.

The only real way to release software that runs on any linux distribution is to release it as source code or write your own self contained installer that has every library your software needs and installs it all in it's own private folder. But both have large problems and disadvantages from a business standpoint.

This is why most commercial software for linux and unix variants only only support a limited set of distributions. This is why I have to run solaris 10 at work when I'd be much happier running debian. This is why I have a redhat server when I'd be much happier again running debian.


 
Originally posted by: sourceninja
glibc.
Click to expand...

*** glibc detected *** corrupted double-linked list: 0x0000000000ced390 ***

🙂

Thats the kind of problem you get when you mix glibc's (assuming you can force them to run in the first place). The code that produced the above valgrinds 100% clean, to boot. It dies on a string resize.
 
Originally posted by: Perry404
[
Click to expand...

Actually it DOES correlate.
Windows nt4 is to windows 2000 is to windows xp...they're all based on essentially the same kernel.
My point is that the kernel is the OS.

Anyway you know if we take this any further it's going to get philosophical and that is not the point of this thread.[/quote]

Perry, Linux is like ntoskrnl.exe found in your \windows folder.

It is an OS Kernel and just like ntoskrnl it will do nothing by itself. You need things like a shell (cmd.exe, explorer.exe) and all sorts of other "goo" to make it do anything useful. ntoskrnl.exe is not even capable of reading and writing to a disk or network so it alone is not an operating system.

Linux is an OS *kernel*.

Distributions of linux that include the other "goo" are what make an operating system.

The same way that ntoskrnl.exe + ntdll + explorer + 999 other pieces of "goo" make Windows NT or Windows Vista an OS.

I hope this helps.
 
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