Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack wrote:
>So what do they basically want? They basically want us to comply to the
>community editions terms as described in [1]. This implies that we do not use
>any term that reads: "Mozilla Thunderbird". Neither in the package-name nor
>in the application itself.
Correct....
>So what does this mean? The mozilla-thunderbird package should be named
>thunderbird (*sigh*). They feel this is most important and there is no way to
No, worse; they want "thunderbird-community-edition". Or
"thunderbird-community-edition-debian" :-P Barring explicit special
permission.
It gets worse. From the trademark policy:
--
Community members and organizations can start using the "Firefox Community
Edition" and "Thunderbird Community Edition" trademarks from day one, but the
Mozilla Foundation may require individuals or teams to stop doing so in the
future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to
remedy the situation have not succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to
give as much freedom to people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks
as a mark of quality (which we are required to do in order to keep them).
--
In other words, they can revoke the right to use the Thunderbird name
entirely, on a whim. Is that acceptable (DFSG-free) or not? This is not an
issue which I remember addressing before.
If they did revoke permission in the future, you'd need to change all the
names *again*. That might be an incentive to go the Iceweasel route
immediately. :-P
>negotiate about the package name. In addition we need to make some changes to
>the thunderbird
"thunderbird-community-edition"
>package. That is ... remove all "Mozilla Thunderbird" terms from
>the app (change to Debian Thunderbird).
"Debian Thunderbird Community Edition"
>In addition all locale packages need to
>be adjusted.
Yep.
>Another IMHO more important point is, that we need (they want us) to add a
>statement to the thunderbird copyright file like:
>
>"People distributing works derived from the default Debian package of
>Thunderbird will have to also comply with the mozilla.org trademark policies,
"Thunderbird Community Edition"
>or remove the trademarks entirely from the package. Obviously, if it's a
>just a copy of the package, no permission would be needed."
Yes, that's a fine legal notice.
>So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these
>restrictions?
Well, the legal notice is OK. I hope I've clarified what the trademark policy
actually requires. :-P Whether that's free enough or not, I don't know.
Some other parts I *don't* like:
"Therefore if you want to ship extenions, themes or plugins installed by
default (as opposed to, say, linked as XPIs from the default start page) then
you need to run the list past us for approval."
...
"Any rights to Mozilla Foundation trademarks granted in this document fall
under an over-arching requirement that the use of the trademark be
non-confusing and non-disparaging."
Non-confusing is fine and good, of course. We love non-confusing.
Non-disparaging is a unpleasant free speech infringment, and I don't like it
one bit. It's probably included because of some stupid legal precedent....
"By non-disparaging, we mean that (outside the bounds of fair use) you can't
use our marks to be rude about us."
If I remember correctly, the bounds of fair use in the US say you can pretty
nearly always use the marks in criticism. What the heck is going on here?
Is this referring purely to (the equivalent of) having a package labeled
"Mozilla" with deliberate trash in it? Or is it actually about stifling
criticism?
These are trademarks with fairly strong restrictions on use claimed. The
question is whether trademarks with such strong restrictions on use should be
used under license by Debian in main, or considered non-free and stripped
from main. I am not going to pretend to answer that question since I'm not
sure. I'm inclined to say "yes, it's free", but...
> If _not_, the only option left would be the iceweasel way mentioned in [1].
Which would have the advantage of not requiring a second round of work if the
Mozilla Foundation decided to revoke permission to use the Community
trademark license. So I would be inclined to do this....
Heh. I'm a fence-sitter.
...
>[1] - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
More nasty points:
Addon packages should not, according to the trademark policy, be called
"thunderbird-enigmail", for instance. "enigmail-for-thunderbird" is fine
though. (Whew.)
>[1] - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
--Nathanael Nerode
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