Aryeh Gregor wrote: > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen > <[email protected]> wrote: >> The notion that trade marked logos are problematic is true for a specific >> strict understanding of the GPL license as is prevalent under people who >> adhere to the Debian way of thinking. It is definetly not universally shared >> and it is a travesty that brought us Iceweasel. > > The Iceweasel question is "Does it violate the definition of free > software to permit logos released under licenses permitting only > restricted distribution?" Most people other than Debian would say no, > because 1) they're a tiny part of the software and easily removed, and > 2) they're trademarked, so you couldn't use them for much even if they > weren't copyrighted.
This is getting a bit off-topic, but the fundamental stumbling block with Firefox wasn't the logos; rather it was Mozilla's trademark-licensing policy. Nobody may distribute a browser named "Firefox" unless it's either the unmodified official release, or first clears any modifications with Mozilla. Debian considered that non-free, because the right to distribute your own patched version is sort of the whole point of free software. More practically, their security team objected to having legal hurdles between writing a patch and being permitted to ship it. So, they use a different name that doesn't come with that "must get approval for all modifications" restriction. (The logo issue is tangled in because the first modification Debian tried to do that triggered a Mozilla objection was removing the Firefox logo. But in the ensuing discussion, Mozilla made clear that they would object to *any* modifications that weren't first cleared with them, which is what made it impossible for Debian to continue using the Firefox name, even for Debian developers who were on the other side of the logo issue.) -Mark _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
