[TriLUG] AOL Redhat Linux?!?

[Tanner Lovelace]

On Sat, 2002-01-19 at 20:28, Chris Merrill wrote:
>
> You're absolutely right.  I can't beleive I
> forgot.  If I'm not mistaken AOL was primarily
> an Apple network service in the early days.

And then on Mon, 2002-01-21 at 23:14, Reginald Reed wrote:
> Ed,
> 
> You get "the big Cookie:"
> 
> http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/20000111/A18322-2000Jan11.html
> 
> --Reggie

Actually, the history of "America Online" is even a bit more
complicated than that.  How many people here can say they had
an America Online account in 1985?  I can.  When I lived in
Birmingham, Alabama in the 1980s a co-worker of my dad's
ran a PC-Board BBS called America Online.  Fortunately,
they had the foresite to register the name as a trademark.
Fast forward to 1989 where Reggie's timeline tells us:

>* October 1989 - Introduces America Online service for Macintosh and
>  Apple II computers.

I talked to my dad's coworker (who's name I can't remember
right now) several years ago and asked him about how the
name got transferred.  (I was in the process of selling 
the domain name I had registered in 1993 and wanted
an opinion from someone who had done something similar.)
What he told me was that apparently, the current America
Online had printed up a lot of promotional material with
"America Online" on it before doing a trademark search.  Ooops!
Anyway, they made my dad's coworker and his partner a 
good deal, they sold them the name and then changed the
name of their BBS to The Matrix.  (Which is no longer 
around, but you can read a little bit about it
here: http://www.bham.net/bwp/.)

So anyway, I suppose the question of them buying Redhat
looks to be academic now, anyway since several places
are reporting it to be not true.  I guess we'll find
out.

Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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