* Alexander Sack ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: [snip] > Mike appears to be subscribed to this list ... Eric, will you jump in if > you have any objections, etc.?
Alright, jumping in... I'm not subscribed to the list and didn't really have any idea this was generating so much traffic. I went back and read all the threads (I think) and I hope I have a good understanding of what's going on. Unfortunately, I have a number of objections. Before I get to them, one of the interesting things pointed out in one of the threads is that the Trademark License might be more onerous then what trademark law (at least in the US) allows. Now, they're your trademarks, and I have every intention of respecting your wishes when it comes to using them. It may not paint the Mozilla Foundation in a good light if you are indeed trying to impose more restrictions than trademarks allow. Now then, I personally will not accept any deal that is Debian specific. Whether or not this is actually against DFSG #8 or not is beside the point, I don't want to play if it's only because we're the popular kid. This problem goes beyond Debian. Other distributions are not going to be able to use the trademark license as written. Are you going to cut deals with Fedora, Slackware and Gentoo as well? They're probably more likely to want to deal than us, but does that mean the little distros don't get to use the trademarks because they're not worth striking a deal with? The reason trademarks like the TeX one are more palatable is that there's a set of technical requirements and as long as you meet them you get to use the mark. You've already sort of done that with the Community Edition licensing, but you haven't gone far enough for what a distro is going to need: * Applying security fixes * Back porting bug fixes * Making distro specific integration changes and possibly a few others, that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure you'll have some more of your own. You're the ones who get to make the rules and if they're not too much of a burden then we'll play and won't have to go with iceweasel. But anyone who wants to follow the rules should be allowed to play, not just the big kids (aka Debian). Ok, I've just about exhausted the schoolyard metaphor, but I hope I made my point. As it stands now I'm not going to take any action until: * The Mozilla Foundation tells me to stop using the marks or, * The Trademark License is finalized (right now it still says version 0.7 draft, so I don't consider it in any way binding). PS please CC me on any replies, I'm not subscribed to debian-legal. -- Eric Dorland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1024D/16D970C6 097C 4861 9934 27A0 8E1C 2B0A 61E9 8ECF 16D9 70C6 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s++: a-- C+++ UL+++ P++ L++ E++ W++ N+ o K- w+ O? M++ V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R tv++ b+++ DI+ D+ G e h! r- y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
