The Australian open source community is buzzing over a letter sent out by Linus Torvald's lawyers asserting his right to the Linux trademark, and expressing an intent to collect license fees.

Fees will range from $200 for a non-profit to $5000 for a profit-making enterprise with revenues of over $1 million, says the the Linux Mark Institute.

But we are assured that nothing awful, such as "profit," is involved. No, the purpose of the fees is to allow LMI to "work to protect legitimate uses of the LINUX trademark without burdening Linus Torvalds or any one entity with the financial responsibility of protecting the LINUX community's use of the mark."

Well, yes, it does take resources to do things like ensure quality control of a mark. And to pay the staff that does it, and interest on the money used to build the office and buy the equipment, and so on. "Profits" are a few percent of the revenues of most businesses.

We are all in favor of LMI and other open source businesses, such as Mozilla, figuring out how to get revenue streams to support their work. But we are baffled by the logic chopping whereby charging for consulting service is fine while license fees are forbidden, or charging for trademark enforcement is acceptable, but generating an excess to compensate Torvalds for his past investment of time is not.

Commerce is a good thing. Revenue streams are good. Profits are good. Repeat this. Accept it. You'll be happier.

Note: A Linux license does not give you the right to use Tux, the penguin. For that you must go here. But the permission is easy to get: "Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks."

Interesting, since this means that I could create a computer program, or anything else, and then attach the penguin to it even if had nothing to do with Linux. If people started doing this en masse, the result would be consumer confusion, not to mention a dilution of the investment that the open source people have made in establishing Tux as a symbol of Linus. Property rights are granted in marks to encourage investment and avoid consumer confusion.

posted by James DeLong @ 5:39 PM | Software

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