Perhaps there is a simpler, less radical way you can achieve what you want.
It seems that you want Ion to be a great piece of software for you to use yourself and also for others to use. Us users are all very appreciative that you have made Ion available. (Certainly you could decide not to make any new releases of Ion publicly available anymore at all, but I imagine that you, like myself and other free software developers, enjoy seeing others benefiting from your work.) Certainly users cannot have any expectation of support from you, even if they are using the latest version; clearly they are better off getting the Ion source code from you without support than not getting Ion at all. If you decide you are willing to provide support for the latest unmodified version, that is, of course, an added bonus. It seems that your primary motivations for the recent licensing/trademark/distribution changes are twofold: 1. You do not want the reputation of Ion (and your work) to be hurt due to distributions associating the name Ion with old or patched (and therefore possibly worse) versions of Ion. 2. You do not want to have to deal with support requests for old or modified versions of Ion. In addition, you might also want to ensure that everyone using Ion is using the best possible version (which you assume to be the current, unmodified version), and therefore would like to make sure that the current version is the one most readily available/convenient for all users. (Therefore, you'd like to ensure that if distributions make Ion available as a package (thus more convenient than downloading it from the Ion web page directly), the current version is the one that will be available.) I'll address the first two objectives below, but I'll explain first why this last objective does not need to be considered: I think that it really is reasonable for distributions to decide what version of Ion to provide users; it doesn't make sense to try to force users of some "stable" distribution, like Debian stable, to use the very latest version of Ion. One significant reason users pick a distribution is because they _want_ to follow the judgment of the distribution packagers in selecting particular versions of packages and particular patches to apply. You might not agree with the decisions made by the distribution packagers, but except to the extent that it relates to the first two objectives, I don't think you should be concerned about users being given convenient access to "sub-standard" versions of Ion. As far as the first objective, it is common knowledge that distributions often make significant patches to the packages they distribute, and sometimes those patches can change the behavior of the package in certain ways, or in the worst case introduce bugs. It is also common knowledge that distributions typically don't always distribute the latest version of a package. Distributions typically will still call the package by its original name, but users should know that the program they receive from the distribution package is not exactly the same as the latest version of the original package. More importantly, though, you can ensure that this fact is very clear by requesting that distributions include a very prominent message in any packages of Ion that are modified or not current. The message can state very clearly that the distribution-created package provides a modified version of Ion that may have additional bugs or missing features compared to the current official version. This message can be displayed both during installation, and also perhaps upon the first launch after an upgrade and upon the very first launch after a new installation. I think this simple request should suffice for satisfying the first objective. As far as the second objective, the problem seems to come down to eliminating what you would consider to be effectively junk e-mails (support requests for old/modified Ion versions) from the Ion mailing list. I think this can be achieved by requesting that distributions add a notice to packages for old/modified versions of Ion that users should not spam the Ion mailing list with support requests, but rather should send the request to the distribution package maintainer. Furthermore, you could include a message by all places that list the address for the Ion mailing list that you are willing to provide support for the current official Ion version, but you don't have time to provide support for old or modified versions of Ion, and therefore support questions regarding old or modified versions of Ion should not be sent to the list. You can request, also, that any support request should explicitly state at the beginning of the message what version of Ion is used, such that you can easily filter an inappropriate support requests. I think distributions should certainly try to respect your wishes regarding the packaging of Ion, regardless of whether you find a way to legally enforce that; as I see it, laws govern the interactions of enemies, not the interactions of friends, and I'd like to think that there can be a friendly relationship between distribution package maintainers, users, and free software developers. Trying to impose these various additional license/trademark restrictions will only create additional hassle for everyone, while providing little real gain for you; in the end, fewer people will be able to benefit from your work, either because they don't bother to try Ion because it is not included in their distribution (even if such a user would eventually build Ion from source, someone merely looking to "check out" Ion is less likely to do so if it requires manually obtaining the source code, building it, and installing it), or because they would like to incorporate some code from Ion into another project, but because of the license restrictions, cannot do this. -- Jeremy Maitin-Shepard
