Red Hat branding police outlaws RHEL

Red Hat branding police outlaws RHEL

Matthew Aslett, March 6, 2008 @ 11:54 am ET

I just noticed an article from last month’s Red Hat Magazine that states: “It is never correct to abbreviate ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux’ as ‘RHEL’.” As one of the commenters states, it is about fours years too late for that, and Red Hat’s branding police will have their work cut out editing the 47,400 uses of the term RHEL on Red Hat’s own web site, not to mention educating the company’s own executives.

One of the implications of this new ruling is revealed by the snappy title of the article in question: “Tips and tricks: How do I properly refer to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in documentation and when conversing with fellow users and customers?”

Meanwhile it appears that the new rules do not extend to Red Hat Magazine’s own URLs. The address for said article is http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/02/04/tips-and-tricks-rhel-ref/

However, word has spread to Wikipedia, which informs us that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is “often incorrectly abbreviated to RHEL”.

You have been warned.