Ian Jackson wrote: > 1. DFSG principles should apply. IMO taking this as a starting point is completely wrong. DFSG guarantees that incompetent and malicious people may freely modify the software. For trademarks to have any meaning at all, distributing those modified versions under the original trademark must not be allowed. DFSG principles should not be applied to trademarks; if you insist on applying them, then the only consistent position is to completely reject any use of trademarks whatsoever.
Trademarks can be viewed as a legally (rather than technically) enforced form of authentication. Allowing any downstream to freely use trademarks makes about as much sense as allowing any downstream to freely sign their modified packages with Debian archive signing keys. > 2. No Debian-specific licences; freedom to make changes. While I can see the rationale for wishing to avoid Debian-specific licenses, I doubt adding such a restriction would ultimately be beneficial. In practice, trying to codify software quality requirements is just too hard. Trusting (and occasionally verifying) the competence of a known team is a lot more practical. The alternative to distro-specific licenses wouldn't be more downstream freedom but no distro-level freedom for anyone; and I don't think Debian preemptively renaming everything would be in the interest of most downstreams either. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
