Might I suggest that you contact the Software Freedom Law Center? They do stuff like this precisely. Trying to do a license without a lawyer these days is like pinning a bull's eye on your project.
PJ Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi Tom, Bill and others, > > On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:34:28PM -0500, Tom Hoffman wrote: >> Scratch is, or should be a trademark. > > [details snipped] > >> Mozilla has very strict terms for trademark use -- so much so that it >> is called Iceweasel in Debian: >> http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/ >> >> I suspect Scratch would want to find some language which says "you may >> only call this Scratch if you have not modified the source." >> Ultimately, IANAL, and I don't know *exactly* how to do it, but it is >> in this ballpark. > > To me, this seems like a good approach to protect the _branding_ value > of your marvellous product, while allowing uncontrolled growth - which > includes the risk of forks. > > Through this similar dilemma I now much better understand the > "hysterical" trademark standpoint of Mozilla. > > > Earlier, Mitch Resnick wrote (proxied by Bill Kerr): >> We don't have any problem allowing commercial use of the Scratch binary >> (and are planning to update the license accordingly). But several >> people in our group have reservations about allowing commercial use of >> the Scratch source code. One main reason: We are concerned about >> multiple forks that could be confusing to users. We have put a lot of >> effort into building an online community around Scratch, so we don't >> want the community to fragment. Also, Scratch is based on some core >> educational ideas, and we are worried that alternate versions might not >> be consistent with these educational ideas, thus muddying the >> educational message underlying Scratch. >> >> Our current thinking is to create our own Linux version of Scratch, and >> then allow commercial use of the source (since we feel that there will >> be less reason for people to make forks, once we have create an >> "official" Linux version of Scratch). >> >> But, as I said, we're not sure about this reasoning. We'd be interested >> to hear your opinion. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions? > > I welcome this approach, and have no better idea to solve the dilemma. > > It would certainly be better in my opinion if you could see the benefit > of more widespread distribution of Scratch as outweighing the danger of > loosing touch (or control) with your users. But I respect if your > judgement on this. > > > - Jonas > > Debian developer > > > - -- > * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt > * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ > > [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkka54wACgkQn7DbMsAkQLh/lwCfZabe86ljc03xJ5ozmyH1Eh3o > IGMAnA0kmksrvJwzP8H2fNI8Wg0jEhMW > =NA9u > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
