Suggestion to avoid eBay sales

girardot · **Joined:** Fri Apr 29, 2005 11:44 pm **Posts:** 2

Maybe you could do what OpenBSD does:

Copyright the layout of the CD. You are not copyrighting any of the applications or whatever on the CD, just the arrangment of items on the CD.

Then just tell eBay that someone is selling your copyrighted work and they will remove the auctions.

Checkout the OpenBSD site, they might have more details, that is how they prevent people from selling the CDs they distribute even though everything on the CD is oss.

Just a thought.

Thanks for the effort on such a useful tool.

Regards,
Blake Girardot

Victor Chew · **Joined:** Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:59 pm **Posts:** 1183

I googled "openbsd license", but only found
http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html

A search at openbsd.org uncovered this:

Quote:

OpenBSD is all free. The binaries are free. The source is free. All
parts of OpenBSD have reasonable copyright terms permitting free
redistribution. This includes the ability to REUSE most parts of the
OpenBSD source tree, either for personal or commercial purposes.
OpenBSD includes NO further restrictions other than those implied by
the original BSD license. Software which is written under stricter
licenses cannot be included in the regular distribution of OpenBSD.
This is intended to safeguard the free use of OpenBSD. For example,
OpenBSD can be freely used for personal use, for academic use, by
government institutions, by non-profit making organizations and by
commercial organizations. OpenBSD, or parts of it, can also be freely
incorporated into commercial products.

Am I missing something here?

girardot · **Joined:** Fri Apr 29, 2005 11:44 pm **Posts:** 2

Your missing the FAQ:

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html#ISO

Code:

3.3 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image for download?
Some other open source operating systems are commonly distributed as CD-ROM ISO images. This is not how OpenBSD is distributed.

The OpenBSD project does not make the ISO images used to master the official CDs available for download. The reason is simply that we would like you to buy the CD sets, helping fund ongoing OpenBSD development. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt. Theo does not permit people to redistribute images of the official OpenBSD CDs. As an incentive for people to buy the CD set, some extras are included in the package as well (artwork, stickers etc).

Note that only the CD layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else from downloading OpenBSD and making their own CD. If for some reason you want to download a CD image, try searching the mailing list archives for possible sources. Of course, any OpenBSD ISO images available on the Internet either violate Theo de Raadt's copyright or are not official images. The source of an unofficial image may or may not be trustworthy; it is up to you to determine this for yourself. 

The only difference I see is that Theo doesn't allow downloads of the ISO images.

Here the ISO's can be downloaded, but they still are not permitted to be redistributed in any way if the layout is copywritten.

So someone could get all the same utilities as on the official ISO image and arrange them in any fashion but the way this ISO is layed out.

Now when you see them on EBAY you tell ebay they are infringing your copyright and they should take them down.

Make sure to copyright every page of this site so they can't copy/paste it into the ebay auction, or even a portion of it.

You could even go so far as to trademark the name "Ultimate Boot CD" and UBCD or whatever, then if they used it in their ad, you could inform ebay they were violating your tm as well. Admittedly TM law is much more complicated than copyright law, so this one I even less clear on, but enforcement might qualify as informing ebay.

Thats my take on it at least, just an idea. Can't hurt to try it if you have a bunch of free time on your hands :)

Regards,
Blake

Victor Chew · **Joined:** Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:59 pm **Posts:** 1183

Charles, you are the expert here. Any comments on this approach vs. a
RedHat-type license?

Suggestion to avoid eBay sales

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