Eric Dorland wrote:
severity 354622 important
thanks
* Steve Langasek ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
Hi Mike,
On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 03:01:01PM -0500, Mike Connor wrote:
Package: firefox
Version: 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.1-2
Severity: serious
Firefox (the name) is equally protected and controlled by the same
trademark policy and legal requirements as the Firefox logo. You're
free to use any other name for the browser bits, but calling the browser
Firefox requires the same approvals as are required for using the logo
and other artwork.
The trademark policy for firefox marks has been discussed repeatedly in the
Debian community, and it is my understanding that the Mozilla Foundation
*has* extended a trademark license to Debian so long as changes we make to
the software remain within certain reasonable limits. Are you saying that
there's a problem with the packages which invalidates that license, or that
the Mozilla Foundation is rescinding that license, or what?
Indeed, please see
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00002.html.
To my knowledge, each patchset that deviates from what we ship should be
run by whoever is doing licensing approvals (this is in progress with
various distributions already). Its hard, if not impossible, to define
a set of guidelines that is crystal clear and doesn't need human
oversight. Novell and Red Hat already do this.
The key problem is that there is code, and a build switch, that
explicitly handles the official branding/logos vs. the generic
name/artwork, and the package maintainer has chosen to break this switch
by making the unofficial side of the switch also label itself as
Firefox. I don't understand the motivations here, since the changelog I
saw isn't visible (packages.debian.org is still being weird) but the
gist of it was "avoid using the official branding switch" which seems
like one of those "makes it harder to undo" steps since people actually
would have to change code instead of build options to not be bound by
those terms. If users don't build with the official branding, its
because they are not accepting the terms of using things bound up in
trademark law. Doing things this way implies that only the artwork is
part of the official branding, as opposed to the name as well.
Why can't you just use the official branding switch, anyway?
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