Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with something else Which isn't too hard, given that we have centralised branding files. I found and replaced the artwork in my local build, from mozilla/other-licenses/branding but how do I change the name used in the titlebar and About menu entry? Indeed. If you renamed the product, you'd need to change the command and package names also. Package name probably. I'm using FireWWW here for now. Command name seems unlikely (see sendmail).
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
[Since Sylpheed messed up with the GPG signature, I resend this message
(hopefully) correctly signed; I apologize for this]
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:56:45 +0100 Florian Weimer wrote:
They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions
mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be
DFSG-free.
Yes, but is requiring a global replacing of trademarked strings and
images acceptable?
I mean: it seems that Mozilla is requiring us
* either to comply with strict modification constraints
* or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with
something else
First option seems unacceptable (we couldn't even patch for security
reasons before they decide to release a new version, correct me if I'm
wrong).
Second option would require the Debian package maintainer to dig into
the source and play seek destroy with all cases in which the work is
referenced as Mozilla {thunderbird|firefox} or in which the official
logo is used...
This seems a bit more than requiring a name change (per DFSG 4).
The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless
at that because they give permission to retain the command names.
Judging from the followups to your message, it seems that this is not
the case... :-(
--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
..
Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4
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Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Francesco Poli wrote: Yes, but is requiring a global replacing of trademarked strings and images acceptable? I mean: it seems that Mozilla is requiring us * either to comply with strict modification constraints Not so strict, really. Certainly not to the level of preventing security patches. Exactly how it would work would be something we'd negotiate. * or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with something else Which isn't too hard, given that we have centralised branding files. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. Judging from the followups to your message, it seems that this is not the case... :-( Indeed. If you renamed the product, you'd need to change the command and package names also. Gerv
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 12:03:15AM +, Gervase Markham wrote: The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. Judging from the followups to your message, it seems that this is not the case... :-( Indeed. If you renamed the product, you'd need to change the command and package names also. The command (eg. the binary's filename) is a functional element, which can not--to my limited understanding--be restricted by trademark. Debian can always provide a mozilla binary (or symlink), that runs debzilla. (This wouldn't be an unreasonable thing to do, given the alternatives paradigm, as long as the program itself was properly renamed--eg. it doesn't say Mozilla in the title bar.) Note that copyright licenses which require changing command names are not allowed by the DFSG. DFSG#4 allows requiring the name of the program to be changed, but requiring the command itself to be changed essentially prohibits compatibility, which goes too far. I suspect that while the package name would be changed, a helper mozilla package would point people to it. Of course, it'd be nice if the resolution of this doesn't require Debian to rename Mozilla. However, as it's very uncommon for people to brandish trademarks in this way--among free software, at least--there's not much experience with how they interact with Debian's required freedoms. I can't remember the last time a trademark issue was even raised on debian-legal. This is somewhat evidenced by the amount of head-scratching going on--it may take some time to figure out. -- Glenn Maynard
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:56:45 +0100 Florian Weimer wrote:
They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions
mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be
DFSG-free.
Yes, but is requiring a global replacing of trademarked strings and
images acceptable?
I mean: it seems that Mozilla is requiring us
* either to comply with strict modification constraints
* or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with
something else
First option seems unacceptable (we couldn't even patch for security
reasons before they decide to release a new version, correct me if I'm
wrong).
Second option would require the Debian package maintainer to dig into
the source and play seek destroy with all cases in which the work is
referenced as Mozilla {thunderbird|firefox} or in which the official
logo is used...
This seems a bit more than requiring a name change (per DFSG 4).
The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless
at that because they give permission to retain the command names.
From the followups to your message, it seems that this is not the
case... :-(
P.S.: please do not Cc: or To: me, as I'm a debian-legal subscriber and
I didn't ask to be Cc:ed, nor set a Mail-Followup-To:... TIA :)
--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
..
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Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:28:56 +0100 Jacobo Tarrio wrote: In short: yes, trademarks are orthogonal to copyright, ergo to copyright license freeness. Trademark are indeed orthogonal to copyright, but are they orthogonal to freeness? Note that I didn't mentioned copyright: DFSG are not limited to copyright issues... -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpAmSrFxy5YC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Sun, 02 Jan 2005, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 12:44:33 + Andrew Suffield wrote: It's not a major problem, because you can generate an unarguably free work once by stripping it, and then everybody can modify the stripped version instead. That's true, but... ...what's the difference between a trademark-encumbered work and a patent-encumbered one? If I take a patent-encumbered work released under a free copyright license, I can generate an unarguably free work by stripping the patented algorithms and replacing them with non-patented ones: then everybody can deal with the stripped version... There really isn't a difference between the two. We don't go looking for trademark problems, just like we don't go looking for patent issues. When they find us, we should eradicate the patent or trademark encumbered part of the work in question, assuming that's possible, replace it with something unecumbered so the work can function, and carry on our merry way. In the case of Mozilla, the trademark problem seems to have found us, so the maintainers of the package need to figure out what do do about dealing with them, either through some sort of free trademark license (unlikely that that's even possible) or by replacing the trademarks. Don Armstrong -- Quite the contrary; they *love* collateral damage. If they can make you miserable enough, maybe you'll stop using email entirely. Once enough people do that, then there'll be no legitimate reason left for anyone to run an SMTP server, and the spam problem will be solved. Craig Dickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 12:06:06PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 12:44:33 + Andrew Suffield wrote: It's not a major problem, because you can generate an unarguably free work once by stripping it, and then everybody can modify the stripped version instead. That's true, but... ...what's the difference between a trademark-encumbered work and a patent-encumbered one? Trademarks are easier to strip. That's pretty much it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Francesco Poli wrote:
Second option would require the Debian package maintainer to dig into
the source and play seek destroy with all cases in which the work is
referenced as Mozilla {thunderbird|firefox} or in which the official
logo is used...
This seems a bit more than requiring a name change (per DFSG 4).
I should point out that changing the name of Firefox and Thunderbird is
designed to be easy. Netscape does it with the suite to make Netscape,
after all. There's a central branding file or two where you change the
name once and it's picked up almost everywhere.
I'm not saying it's trivial, but it is true that things that make it
difficult are treated as bugs, not features, and fixed.
Gerv
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 12:06:06PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 12:44:33 + Andrew Suffield wrote: It's not a major problem, because you can generate an unarguably free work once by stripping it, and then everybody can modify the stripped version instead. That's true, but... ...what's the difference between a trademark-encumbered work and a patent-encumbered one? If I take a patent-encumbered work released under a free copyright license, I can generate an unarguably free work by stripping the patented algorithms and replacing them with non-patented ones: then everybody can deal with the stripped version... Don't misunderstand me, it's *not* sarcasm: I'm really wondering what's the difference... The *likely* primary difference is that trademarks are, *almost* always, not relevant to the functionality of the program as a whole. In the cases where they were, somehow (and I'm hard pressed to come up with one) I would expect that the trademark license would be required to be licensed in a sufficiently free manner that it wouldn't be an issue. Patented algorithms, on the other hand, are often the very core of the program involved - and thus, stripping and replacing them is often impractical, or in some cases, impossible (if the patent covers the entire concept of the program's usage, and not just a specific way of accomplishing it). If the patent were on some tertiary function that could be trivially done another way, well, I'd expect we might well strip it and replace it to avoid issues with an actively enforced patent, but this seems unlikely to be the case anytime soon (given how broad software patents often are). -- Joel Aelwyn [EMAIL PROTECTED] ,''`. : :' : `. `' `- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 12:25:25PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
Yes, but is requiring a global replacing of trademarked strings and
images acceptable?
I mean: it seems that Mozilla is requiring us
* either to comply with strict modification constraints
* or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with
something else
First option seems unacceptable (we couldn't even patch for security
reasons before they decide to release a new version, correct me if I'm
wrong).
Second option would require the Debian package maintainer to dig into
the source and play seek destroy with all cases in which the work is
referenced as Mozilla {thunderbird|firefox} or in which the official
logo is used...
This seems a bit more than requiring a name change (per DFSG 4).
Just as sweat of the brow is not copyrightable (in the US), Debian has
not, to the best of my knowledge, ever declared a package non-free
because it was too much trouble to do something that was legal and would
render it free. Certainly, the unmodified version may be non-free, and it
may not be *worth our while* to make a free variant, if nobody is willing
to volunteer to do it - but that isn't the same thing as the theoretical
stripped version not being free. It's only not being worth the trouble
(and implies that if, say, someone over at Fedora stripped it and published
the stripped tarball, we could potentially start from that point, even if
our maintainer hadn't done the work).
Of course, history has demonstrated that we often can find someone who
cares enough to do the gruntwork. But not having that isn't a matter of
freeness, only a matter of whether it is worth our bother.
--
Joel Aelwyn [EMAIL PROTECTED] ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
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Re: Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Gerv wrote: I should point out that changing the name of Firefox and Thunderbird is designed to be easy. Netscape does it with the suite to make Netscape, after all. There's a central branding file or two where you change the name once and it's picked up almost everywhere. I'm not saying it's trivial, but it is true that things that make it difficult are treated as bugs, not features, and fixed. This rocks. :-) Just so you know, we all appreciate this greatly.
Trademarks: what is the line?
Hi all! :) With all these trademark-related issues, I must confess I'm getting more and more confused... :-( Mozilla foundation is trying to make us accept numerous constraints on modification for their software. SPI owns Debian-related trademarks: there is the issue about Debian logo images (do they comply with DFSG?). On the other hand, Linux is a trademark, but Linus Torvalds seems to be perfectly fine with Linux kernel packages distributed by Debian (even if they are not verbatim copies of kernel.org distributed versions). Many trademarks are quoted in debian packages (e.g. IBM...), and this doesn't cause them to be non-free. What I wonder is: what is the line between trademarks that are enforced in a Free manner and those that are not? Or are trademarks entirely orthogonal to Freeness issues? They still can be used to impose significant restrictions to freedoms... How does Debian treat such issues? How should Debian treat them? -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpq0Tqwg0xEN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
* Francesco Poli: Or are trademarks entirely orthogonal to Freeness issues? They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. The prime motivation when the DFSG were written likely were TeX and its fonts. TeX's licensing status is worth a discussion of its own, but Debian didn't want to miss this piece of software.
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Florian Weimer wrote: They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. No, they don't. AFAICS, as soon as you do not use the community edition you have to change the package name *and* the command names. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
* Alexander Sack: Florian Weimer wrote: They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. No, they don't. AFAICS, as soon as you do not use the community edition you have to change the package name *and* the command names. Uh-oh. And the community edition does not give permission to change the list of root CAs. 8-(
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 02:12:28PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: * Alexander Sack: Florian Weimer wrote: They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. No, they don't. AFAICS, as soon as you do not use the community edition you have to change the package name *and* the command names. Uh-oh. And the community edition does not give permission to change the list of root CAs. 8-( What sort of nonsense is that? What on earth are they trying to accomplish? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 02:12:28PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: * Alexander Sack: Florian Weimer wrote: They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. No, they don't. AFAICS, as soon as you do not use the community edition you have to change the package name *and* the command names. Uh-oh. And the community edition does not give permission to change the list of root CAs. 8-( What sort of nonsense is that? What on earth are they trying to accomplish? About what Debian seeks to accomplish with the Official Logo: a seal or mark indicating quality. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
O Venres, 31 de Decembro de 2004 ás 12:59:31 -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen escribía: What sort of nonsense is that? What on earth are they trying to accomplish? About what Debian seeks to accomplish with the Official Logo: a seal or mark indicating quality. Yes, but the more widely known logo and name are the ones everyone can use. Mozilla, instead, restricts the use of their only logos and names. They don't say you can call your derived version of our product 'unrestrictedzilla', while we say here, use the swirl. -- Jacobo Tarrío | http://jacobo.tarrio.org/
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 12:59:31PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 02:12:28PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: * Alexander Sack: Florian Weimer wrote: They are not entirely unrelated. The DFSG explicitly mentions mandatory renaming clauses in licenses, and deems them to be DFSG-free. The Mozilla trademark license seems to be rather harmless at that because they give permission to retain the command names. No, they don't. AFAICS, as soon as you do not use the community edition you have to change the package name *and* the command names. Uh-oh. And the community edition does not give permission to change the list of root CAs. 8-( What sort of nonsense is that? What on earth are they trying to accomplish? About what Debian seeks to accomplish with the Official Logo: a seal or mark indicating quality. But their root CAs are crap. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Trademarks: what is the line?
O Venres, 31 de Decembro de 2004 ás 13:12:38 -0800, Steve Langasek escribía: If we're not doing anything that requires licensing the trademark, a requirement in the trademark license to change the command names is ignorable. Well, using the trademark forces us to seek permission (a license) from its owner. But I'm not convinced that a command name would force us (or anyone) to it. -- Jacobo Tarrío | http://jacobo.tarrio.org/
