On Wed, June 29, 2011 4:39 am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > [ Adding ftpmaster to Cc. ftpmaster: please check bug log for context ] > > On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:32:05AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: >> I think Iâm going to leave the Debian Project Leader deal with this. >> Stefano, Iâll let you read the bug log . Maybe youâll want to ask >> the >> FTP masters too, since they are ultimately responsible for inclusion >> rules. > > Ah, dear old can of worms^W^W^W interaction among trademark, FOSS > licenses, and DFSG. > > I'm under the impression that we don't have a clear cut policy on > whether DFSG apply to trademark restrictions as well as to "software" > licenses. I believe it has been judged on a case by case basis by FTP > master. ... but I might be very wrong about this, so I'm getting FTP > masters in the loop for clarification.
OK! As you know, it's a tough line to walk - free software projects like Gnome have adopted permissive trademark policies to allow the software to be distributed freely while hopefully keeping some trademark protection to prevent predatory use of the marks. > > The case of the Debian logo which has been mentioned in this bug log is > actually something we are not happy with, because on one hand we want to > protect debian trademark, but on the other we really don't want some of > our official logos to be non-DFSG free (as they currently are). We would > love to have trademark protection *and* a DFSG-free license, but we have > been advised in the past that doing such a re-licensing might pose > danger to the trademark itself. Exactly! This is the same problem that all truly free software projects wrestle with, which permissive use guidelines try to address. > In that respect, a mutual agreement among Debian and GNOME is not going > to help on the Debian side, given that DFSG §8 is very clear on the fact > that "license" must not be specific to Debian. Actually, what I was saying could work was a license agreement to create a new mark, but then the establishment of a joint trademark policy that permitted its use for everyone, as the Gnome guidelines do now. The mark we're discussing is a new one that uses both Gnome and Debian marks, and one which could be confusing and weaken both of them if not dealt with carefully. Honestly, the mark is different enough (but clearly a use of the Gnome mark) that Gnome will have to evaluate its position on it anyway. I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page, and that there was no question about the removal of the regular Gnome foot logo by Debian (as opposed to the new combined mark), which should be fine to use. The trademark laws are frustrating, but they really are aimed at making sure that some proprietary software vendor can't come along and put our logos on its software and confuse users into thinking that it's free because it's branded to look like us. Trademark is such a pain, but hopefully in the worst case it won't be too big of a deal to just remove the new combined mark if we all want to avoid all of this. karen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org