On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 07:18:37AM +0100, Alban browaeys wrote: > I would say that debian does not treat trademark as a licence. Else we > could not release with the debian "release" logo , nor the debian > trademarked name. > That would be pretty cool :)
That's broken reasoning; it's like saying "we should not treat software that prohibits commercial use as non-free, since otherwise Debian could not prohibit commercial use". Just because Debian wants to do something doesn't make it free; if it's non-free, Debian should stop doing it, too. (The reasoning that goes "Trademarks don't make a work non-free, because you can always remove the trademark and functional elements aren't protected by trademark" is much better, though there are a lot of questions, such as "if it takes substantial effort to remove restricted trademarks from a work, should Debian do so, to ensure that the freedoms required by the DFSG can actually be exercised?", and others.) > I am out of laugh thinking of we tellling the release manager "ehrm > sorry we have an RC on debian, it is not free. Could you contact the SPI > to ask if they agree to "free" the debian name !" :-> "Debian does it, therefore it's free" isn't a line of reasoning that one can use and still take Freeness seriously. -- Glenn Maynard
