At Mr. Fisk's request, the publication was sponsored and managed by SSC (Specialized System Consultants, who at that time were also publishers of Linux Journal).

She'd forward questions to him; he'd answer them to the original querent and copy her on the reply; then, she'd gather up all of those, and include them in the monthly help desk column.

[4] Fisk transferred the management of the Linux Gazette to SSC (under Phil Hughes) in 1996 in order to pursue medical studies, on the understanding that the publication would continue to be open, free, and non-commercial.

LinuxGazette.net contributing editor Rick Moen, however, addressed this claim in an article for LinuxGazette.net:[5] The very same day it received our notice of the magazine's departure, SSC, Inc. suddenly filed a US $300 fee and trademark application #78319880 with the USA Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), requesting registration of the name "Linux Gazette" as a service mark.

... SSC's recent legal claim to hegemony over the name "Linux Gazette" strikes us as outrageously unmerited, and cheeky.Starting May 30, 2004, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Trademark Electronic Business Center's TDR (Text Document Retrieval) online record showed a USPTO "Office Action" on application #78319880, summarily refusing registration on grounds that the proposed mark "merely describes the subject matter and nature of the applicant's goods and/or services", and also because publishing a journal is not per se a "service" within the meaning of the term in trademark law (SSC having not provided descriptive evidence or arguments to counter that presumption).