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Re: config.sub pentium2 and pentiumii aliases (fwd)
"Joseph S. Myers" <jsm28@cam.ac.uk> writes:
On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Robert Dewar wrote:
> Isn't i386 also trademarked?
>
> Do the trademarks really cause a problem, we have a compiler for Pentium,
> I see no reason not to say so. I suppose somewhere we would have to say
> "Trademarks are the property of their respective companies". Is that
> objectionable.
According to the GNU coding standards:
Please do not include any trademark acknowledgements in GNU software
packages or documentation.
Trademark acknowledgements are the statements that such-and-such is a
trademark of so-and-so. The GNU Project has no objection to the basic
idea of trademarks, but these acknowledgements feel like kowtowing, so
we don't use them. There is no legal requirement for them.
What is legally required, as regards other people's trademarks, is to
avoid using them in ways which a reader might read as naming or
labeling our own programs or activities. For example, since "Objective
C" is (or at least was) a trademark, we made sure to say that we
provide a "compiler for the Objective C language" rather than an
"Objective C compiler". The latter is meant to be short for the
former, but it does not explicitly state the relationship, so it could
be misinterpreted as using "Objective C" as a label for the compiler
rather than for the language.
This is a confusing argument. take a look into any configuration
script, and you'll find lots and lots of trademarks. We certainly
cannot and will not avoid calling AIX by its real name, PowerPC byt
its real name, alpha for "alpha", etc, etc.
There is also precedent in distinguishing cpu type accurately. We say
`alphaev56', `alphaev6', `hppa2.0', `sparcv9', etc.
--
Torbjörn