On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:23:08PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > Here is an excerpt from my response
Just an excerpt? :) > as a way of raising the topic for general discussion aside from that > specific example. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts. Here's my opinion: It depends on what compromises the trademark owner is able/prepared to make. My gut feeling is that if the trademarks do not permit modification and redistribution in such a way that there is no longer any clear association with the original trademark, they belong in non-free - if anywhere. Perhaps it is possible to split the trademarks into a separate non-free Suggests/Depends package, and have the main project in main (or contrib for Depends if no placeholder graphics - assuming the trademarks are graphics - are available at the time of packaging). However, I believe some trademarks only allow permission to be applied when an application has not been patched or modified in any way. This could have the effect of compromising the four freedoms! Any trademark that makes its way into a package, where the trademark restricts how the four freedoms (and DFSG) apply to the program - should also be rejected from the main repository outright. If splitting the program up into separate packages is not permitted, throw the whole thing in non-free - until it can be repackaged with free replacements. As you might have guessed, I'm not a fan of trademarks in free software, for the reasons you have already pointed out. Given that the Debian project rejects the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with - I'm surprised they consider trademarks at all for the same kind of reasoning. -Adam
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