Dave Cross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > MJ Ray wrote: [...] > > Actually, this just came up over on http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl/ > > > > That t-shirt back may be infringing the Perl Foundation's trademark. > > See http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_trademark for their claims. > > This was discussed on use.perl.oreg recently[1]. The bottom line is that > TPF are just protecting their trademark - something that you have to do > if you don't want to lose it. > [1] http://use.perl.org/~hex/journal/36678
That's often claimed, but what evidence is there that holders have to license their trademarks in ways incompatible with free software and free culture uses of them? Note the near-total lack of references given in that use.perl thread. Everyone thinks they know trademark law, but it looks like the same old legends repeated. Those comments suggest that Allison Randal drafted the trademark licence. Following links to http://www.onyxneon.com/people/allison.html suggests she's not a lawyer. Was a lawyer consulted and what were they asked? (IIRC, we're probably not going to be allowed to know the lawyer's answer, but we can be told the question.) Sun play nicer with OpenJDK and the Duke logo (IIRC), so why not Perl? Meanwhile, lisp has the round brackets and scheme has lambda and neither community seems to feel the need to trademark-enforce them. Is Perl more endangered than Lisp and Scheme now? [...] > > Bad ORA! Bad TPF! Hurting your fans! > > Not hurting anyone actually. But feel free to have a knee-jerk reaction :) Sorry, I forgot that not everyone on this list sees being able to do things without begging "intellectual property" owners for permission as an obviously good thing. That's a debate for another time/place. > > Annoyed by this crap, > > Welcome to the real world. No, restrictive trademarks aren't real. This is pain invented by overlegislation and protectionism. Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237 _______________________________________________ BristolBathPM mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.bristolbath.org/mailman/listinfo/bristolbathpm
