Hi all! :) I'm wondering whether there has been any progress on the Debian Open Use Logo issue...
Quoting from http://www.debian.org/logos/ | Debian Open Use Logo License | | Copyright (c) 1999 Software in the Public Interest | This logo or a modified version may be used by anyone to refer to the | Debian project, but does not indicate endorsement by the project. | | Note: we would appreciate that you make the image a link to | http://www.debian.org/ if you use it on a web page. If this is a trademark license only, then I fail to find a valid copyright license for the logo. If this is a copyright license (as well as a trademark one) then I would say it's definitely non-free: a) it fails DFGS#6 b) it does not explicitly give permission to distribute (even if maybe it can be considered implicit, but I'm not so sure) If this situation persists, I'm afraid release-critical bugs should be filed (post-Sarge) against any package in main or contrib that include the Debian Open Use Logo... Correct me if I'm wrong. One example? debconf installs /usr/share/pixmaps/debian-logo.xpm IMHO, this issue should be solved. We should find a way to make at least the Debian Open Use Logo DFSG-free, by relicensing it. A free copyright license should not be a problem (I would suggest the Expat a.k.a. MIT license: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt). Some pains arise when we come to deal with the trademark license: can we enforce trademarks in a DFSG-free way? Last time we talked about the Debian logo issue, I almost came to the conclusion that trademarks are orthogonal to DFSG-freeness. But then, the Mozilla trademark issue almost completely changed my mind. See also http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00365.html [archive reference of my message dated Fri, 31 Dec 2004 12:18:52 +0100] for my doubts and the discussion that followed... Now, what I wonder is: what do we want? Can a Debian-based GNU/Linux distro (that is a derived distro, such as Ubuntu, for instance) include the Debian Open Use Logo? *If* we do *not* want this to happen, we should make the stripping as easy as possible: since doing nothing is usually easier than doing something (surprised? ;-), I think that the best way to accomplish this is *not* having *any* instance of the Debian Open Use Logo main or contrib. This would mean that the Debian Open Use Logo could not be DFSG-free (because, otherwise, anyone could download it and include it in any distro, regardless of its presence in Debian itself...) *If* on the other hand we are fine with Knoppix, Ubuntu, or any other distro shipping with Debian Open Use Logo images inside, then there is a chance we can find a way to make this logo DFSG-free (but I don't know if this *can* be compatible with holding a trademark on it). What do you think? -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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