Re: [free-software-melb] Debian social contract and software freedom
On 22/07/13 09:57, Brian May wrote: >> The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not >> fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the >> logo, which Debian could not use. > > The following email says it had nothing to do with the logo, and says it is > was trademark issue. > My understanding is, from reading the list discussions (please correct me where I am wrong, you've been around this community a lot longer than me): http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00757.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg02145.html http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622 Around mid 2005, the Debian maintainer Eric Dorland raised concerns about the use of the Mozilla trademark. This was because although Debian would be able to use the trademark, users would not have those same privileges, which he felt was not acceptable under the DFSG. After some discussion, it appears that Eric made the decision to ignore the issue. In 2006, Mozilla started to take things more seriously. Mike Connor reported a severe bug regarding the use of Firefox as an application name without official branding. Initially the "key problem" was that the unofficial build excluded the official logos. He thought it had been excluded because the artwork was part of the branding, but Eric Dorland said it was because it had a non-free copyright licence (and Gervase Markham of Mozilla had earlier indicated it was okay to leave the logo out). Mike Connor also clarified that they wished to explicitly handle approvals [which would make sense from a legal perspective, because lax maintenance of a trademark can lead to the trademark being lost]. On further pushing, Mike also communicated that Mozilla had issues with some of the patches [it isn't clear to me if that was initially part of the problem, or an escalation of the conflict; it wasn't raised earlier]. They were not prepared to even allow security patches to go through unvetted. A further complication was that this happened just before Etch going into freeze [which forced a quick resolution during a heated discussion]. I feel that there was a failure of communication at least as early as mid 2005 (including internally within Mozilla). I can't see how it was in Mozilla's interest to have an alternative branding with only minor patches in a significant distro, nor is it necessarily in Debian's interest to have to educate users about name changes in major packages. But by 2006, the Mozilla position had hardened to the point that no resolution was possible in the time frame allowed. However, even if the logo issue had been resolved, perhaps this was only a symptom of a deeper rift; as Ben Finney indicated, my use of the word 'fundamental' rather misses the mark. Even had the logo licence been remedied, the approvals process may have still caused problems. I also notice that both Mozilla and Debian now have split logo systems (ie, both open and restricted logos). The trademark issue itself was 'resolved' - unilaterally by Debian dropping the use of the trademark; they were not prevented from distributing the software. Perhaps that wasn't the best outcome, but I think it was justifiable. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65 ___ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
Re: [free-software-melb] Debian social contract and software freedom
On 21 July 2013 15:17, Glenn McIntosh wrote: > The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not > fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the > logo, which Debian could not use. Mozilla decided that if the logo was not > used, then it was not okay to call the software 'Firefox'. I think a better > resolution would have been for Mozilla to provide an alternative logo that > could have been freely licenced, especially since the logo would still > carry trademark protections against misuse. But the issue was not resolved, > so Debian was forced to change the name. This did not stop it distributing > the Mozilla software, even though it no longer was even able to use the > trademark. > Are you sure of that? The following email says it had nothing to do with the logo, and says it is was trademark issue. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/06/msg5.html -- Brian May ___ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
Re: [free-software-melb] Debian social contract and software freedom
On 21/07/13 13:02, Ben Finney wrote: > But those either ignore or punt the issue to trademark. The question > still remains: what restrictions on the freedom of any recipient are > acceptable in exchange for preventing the societal harms trademark law > is designed to address? I'm not convinced that trademarks are being used to restrict software freedoms in any significant way. The trademark does not primarily concern the substance of the software, only the branding of it. While it can be inconvenient to change the branding, trademark alone does not prevent either redistribution or modification. I realize it is not entirely black and white, because the trademark will be embedded in the code, not merely a name-change. But for most software, this is more of an inconvenience than it is a substantive restriction of software freedoms. The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the logo, which Debian could not use. Mozilla decided that if the logo was not used, then it was not okay to call the software 'Firefox'. I think a better resolution would have been for Mozilla to provide an alternative logo that could have been freely licenced, especially since the logo would still carry trademark protections against misuse. But the issue was not resolved, so Debian was forced to change the name. This did not stop it distributing the Mozilla software, even though it no longer was even able to use the trademark. The DFSG allows for such restrictions, though here it is perhaps talking more about a copyright licence. It does not explicitly mention the trademark issues at all. "The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)" Note that I'm not arguing that trademarks cannot be misused (eg they can have a chilling effect on parodies), and I'm not arguing that trademark licences are unimportant (it can be painful to ensure trademark compliance, and unconstructive to have to change the name for minor changes). But I think it is difficult for companies to misuse them specifically with regard to software freedom, because the trademark can in some abstract sense be separated from the software. Ideally the trademark for free software would be licenced in a way that makes it easier on recipients; but without any licence to use a trademark, we can still distribute and modify the associated software. I feel that patent law in particular is more important issue. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65 ___ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
