On 05/28/2016 05:36 PM, AJ ONeal (Home) wrote:
> If I recall correctly last year there was some sort of network tool that
> release all of their stuff under the GPL, but it was riddled with branding
> (images) and trademarks (product name, slogans) that had to be removed
> manually in order to actually build and use the code legally.
> 
> I seem to remember it becoming a big deal and threading on reddit or
> similar. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
> 
> Or something similar?
> I'm looking for one of these types of articles.

There are several open source programs that have trademarks associated
with the artwork and branding. Firefox is one, and there were problems
with Debian and Firefox for years (recently resolved).  A fork of
firefox called Palemoon also had to remove all Firefox and Mozilla
trademarks and artwork when they released their browser.

For GPL'd projects, the entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution is
another example.  You're free to build it from source and release it as
you're own distro, but you have to remove all the trademarked Red Hat
stuff from it.  That's why for years CentOS said they were based on a
well-known upstream distribution.

But neither of these examples I gave restrict the end user from building
it himself.  The restrictions just apply to redistribution.

/*
PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
Don't fear the penguin.
*/

Reply via email to