The Linux Foundation has become a patent troll

rhabarba@feddit.de to Linux@lemmy.ml – 173 points – Steve Lord (@stevelord@bladerunner.social)
bladerunner.social

It seems that the Linux Foundation has decided that both "systemd" and "segmentation fault" (lol?) are trademarked by them.

73

“Patent troll” and “required actions to preserve trademarks” are two totally different things. The former is objectively bad in all ways. The second is explainable if there truly is a trademark and said gear infringes on the trademark and may be excusable if the Linux Foundation is forced to act to preserve their branding (trademark law is weird). It’s even more explainable if this is a shitty auto filter some paralegal had to build without any technical review because IP law firms are hot fucking mess. I’m also very curious to see the original graphics which I couldn’t find on Mastodon. If they are completely unrelated and there was an explicit action by someone who knew better, the explanation provides no excuse.

Attacking any company because the trademark process is stupid doesn’t accomplish much more than attacking someone paying taxes for participating in capitalism.

Why does the Linux Foundation even have a trademark process for "segmentation fault"? According to the poster on Mastodon, these words were the whole design.

Just like champagne only comes from the champagne region of France, true segmentation fault only comes from a linux program shitting itself.

Linux is the imposter here. Segmentation fault refers to how the PDP-(I forget) hardware organized memory. It comes from the original unix implementation which linux has never had any part of.

They aren’t satinf they have a trademark on the phrase ‘ segmentation fault’. They are saying the artwork called ‘segmentation fault’ contains a trademarked image/logo/whatever

What is this segmentation fault logo or image? I’m not familiar with anything like that and searching for it hasn’t helped.

x86 and x86_64 still have segment registers so it's not exactly entirely archaic, but they're not really relevant so that doesnt change what you said. I dont have the exact details on who implemented segmentation first, so I cant elaborate on that.

It doesn’t matter because trademark law is about usage and active protection of rights, not origination.

It does matter because projects like *BSD can prove continuous usage of the term. As such either the trademark is easy to break (it is common use), or it can only be a trademark in very specific contexts that are unlikely to apply.

Sure, what I was saying is that whether someone else created it in the 70s isn’t significant for trademark law. If multiple entities have been using it since then without claiming exclusivity would be significant.

Segmentation fault is the name of the artwork.

The artwork itself might contain the Linux logo

You mean Tux? That's under a custom attribution license, with no noncommercial clause

Doing a search on the USPTO shows no mark for that combination of words. Did the poster share the design? Because either there’s more to the story on their side or there’s more to the Linux Foundation side. For example, an overworked paralegal with no concept of what terms to include. Alternatively, someone being an asshole with a SLAPP suit. We need more information.

You can look trademarks up. They don’t.

There is more to the story, even if it’s just some overzealous bot or contracted company.

Does the back include Linux logo or smth? Otherwise it makes no sense

2 more...

The trademarks owned by the Linux Foundation are listed here: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/trademarks Neither "systemd" or "segmentation fault" are listed. Something smells funky here.

Can a third party lodge a complaint and claim to be acting on behalf of The Linux Foundation? Maybe someone is trolling here.

That's what I was thinking as well. I don't know if it's possible.

If you're implying that there's an issue with copyright law then I have to say that's a pretty naive thing to do, given how famously rock solid those statutes are known to be

Isn't that what copyright/patent trolls are? People who lodge complaints on the behalf of others, regardless of whether or not the original owner of the intellectual property actually cares, or in some cases, even is legally allowed to do so? If it's the original owner, then it's usually just considered to be protecting property.

No, patent trolling is when you patent a bunch of stuff and make money by suing people instead of actually producing that product.

Filing complaints on behalf of someone you don't legally represent is fraud.

Well damn, I guess fraud must be a lot more widespread than I thought. Because no one seems to get punished for this behavior. Just recently, Lockpick, a tool for getting Nintendo Switch roms off a physical device, was dmca'd, and the person who filed the complaint admitted to doing so on twitter. They received no punishment.

I think it's likely that this is a similar case.

Unless the company you’re impersonating does something, nothing will happen. Hosts like Twitch and YouTube don’t care about whether or not a DMCA is fraud because it’s just easier for them to remove the content and delegate resolution to not them. It’s easy to abuse and often is; no one with money cares enough to do anything.

Fraud is a lot more widespread than most people think, across all categories.

Here's a great explanation from silicone valley. .

The best example I know of is Microsoft buying up insanely broad patents that can be marginally related to Linux, getting Suse to say Linux totally infringed on Microsoft's patents in exchange for not getting sued and selling Linux licences to MS, and then harrasing the shit out of every Linux software and hardware manufacturer for over a decade. They stopped when they realised Linux is not going down and that they depend on it for their infrastructure, and that EEE is a better strategy overall. So now they gave away those patents, and Suse is out while Canonical is in.

I have rather serious doubts that this is legit. More likely some joker pretending to be from the Linux Foundation sent Redbubble a takedown request.

I agree. Of the 188 marks registered to "The Linux Foundation" with the USPTO, there does not appear to be a mark for "systemd", "fsck", or "segmentation fault." My guess is this is an imposter claim and the artist should counter notice this claim to Redbubble.

FWIW (and assuming the link works) here's the marks ever registered to the Linux Foundation.

https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4808%3Azqagnv.27.1&p_search=searchstr&BackReference=&p_L=500&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=Linux&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24ON&expr=PARA1+and+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=Foundation&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24ON&a_default=search&f=toc&state=4808%3Azqagnv.27.1&a_search=Submit+Query

The complaint is not about the terms "systemd" and "segmentation fault." Those are the titles of the affected artworks. Presumably the artworks themselves contain some trademarked property.

Also, this is utterly unrelated to patents.

FSCK Systemd

Segmentation Fault

The content isn't anything to write home about. I don't really get it.

Thanks for finding these. I couldn't see them, so I assumed they were removed in response to the complaint.

You're right, there doesn't appear to be anything here to object to.

I can understand Systemd being trademarked, but does the Linux Foundation own the trademark for Systemd..? Surely not. I'd think Red Hat before I thought Linux Foundation.

this has nothing even remotely to do with patents, fam

but it is indeed bullshit.

the purpose of a "trademark" is to prevent the public from being deceived about what they're purchasing, so you can't sell "Big Macs" on your own because the public might be deceived into thinking they were purchasing a product from McDonalds, which (I assume) has trademarked the use of "Big Mac" for fast food.

I HIGHLY doubt the Linux Foundation owns the trademark for "Segmentation Fault" with respect to random merch, so... yeah 100% bullshit

(The image does also say "Linux IP" in addition to "Linux Trademark" and I wonder what the hell that is supposed to mean, since "IP" covers a multitude of dissimilar things, maybe it's just a vague handwavy assertion they make in order to make a takedown without particularly justifying it?)

Funny you should use Big Mac as an example, since McDonalds actually lost that trademark in Europe due to some legal dispute with a pub in Ireland or something

Ok but redbubble is fucking infamous for selling merch with blatantly stolen artwork and logos.

They may act on behalf of others.

Well yes, its a storefront where anyone can sell "their" designs for a cut, the thing is, redbubble has basically no process for making sure that's all happening above board.

Are we certain this complaint was lodged by the Linux Foundation? Frequently DMCA takedowns happen because someone who is not the original rights holder made the complaint. Even when there's no actual rights being violated. Essentially people taking advantage of automated systems or just people not wanting to deal with possible legal issues, trolling of a different sort.

Great, now we need to start The Linix Foundation

You can still get Linux 11 Home Edition free if you're a student or first-responder.

What you're referring to as "Linux" is actually " [RedHat|Canonical|]/Linux"

I hope my license will activate, I'm building a secure disconnected node so I'll have to call the phone activation service.

I'm interested to hear your novel theories about how trademarks and patents are related

It's called the "US Patent and Trademark Office", so they must be basically the same thing, right‽

That's stupid. Can they not just focus on whatever their purpose is?

I think the problem is that just like you (and me), they might not know what their purpose is. 😂

"Linux" is owned by Linus Torvalds. Can he ask this foundation to change its name ?

Yes, but some funding for Linux (some of which goes directly to Torvalds) comes from the Linux Foundation, so why would he?

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.

Well, good for them that are happy with the segmentation fault (?) Every time I see it I start screaming

again and again: systemd is wrong. lennart poettering and redhat broke the dogma. if you use systemd you should have edge as your main browser.

systemd had problems when it was first introduced, but it works much better now and it's not going away. I would suggest to revisit it again.

so arch you say?

False equivalence. Edge isn't FOSS. Systemd is.

Any forks of systemd will have to be renamed to something obviously different from plain “systemd”, but forks already work that way. We are not, for example, using “XFree86” even though the current X Window System is derived from XFree86 code.

Nor must the program files (shell commands, etc) be renamed. OpenSSH still uses the program file name ssh for compatibility, despite “SSH” being a trademark belonging to someone else.

The only dogma systemd has broken is that booting has to be slow, complicated, and unreliable. Good riddance.

The only dogma systemd has broken is that booting has to be slow, complicated, and unreliable.

This was a solved problem before systemd was a thing. And, even if we assumed that Upstart (2006), OpenRC (2007) and others wouldn't have existed in 2010: How often do you need to reboot your system before the intrusiveness of systemd is worth it?

In Upstart's readiness protocol, daemons are expected to SIGSTOP themselves to signal readiness to the process supervisor. This design is extremely questionable, to put it politely.

OpenRC still relies on System V shell scripts, and therefore is not an improvement.

“[T]he intrusiveness of systemd” means nothing to me. I care about what it can do and how well, not whether it's liked by change-fearing graybeards.

The number of reboots required before the effort to learn systemd becomes worth it is approximately 1. Shell-script-based shutdowns frequently hang, and when they don't, they take 30+ seconds to shut the system down. Systemd can shut the system down in 5 to 10 seconds. Hallelujah and good riddance to what was one of my least favorite parts of the Linux experience.