Re: Ongoing Firefox (and Thunderbird) Trademark problems
* Thijs ::
> On Tue, June 14, 2005 08:00, Eric Dorland wrote:
> > Now, the Mozilla Foundation is willing to give us permission to
> > use the marks, but only to Debian specifically. To me, this
> > feels like a violation (at least in spirit) of DFSG #8.
>
> However, in #4, an explicit exception is made for program names
> and version numbers. They are not considered fundamental enough to
> software to require them to be as absolutely free as source code.
> So if we accept this exception for software coming in, why can't
> we accept this same exception for software derived from our
> distribution?
I think you are 100% correct. The right choice IMHO is #3: to strip
all trademarks from the mozilla products (automagically(*) if
possible) and move on with our lives.
(*) meaning that instead of a patch, a script is put under debian/
to strip and change all the trademarks before the build -- so others
can benefit from the script, too.
>
> We don't want to limit the freedoms of those deriving from our
> distribution, but we accept that limiting the freedom of some
> trademarks is acceptable. We accept that we can use the Mozilla
> trademarks, but we also accept that this might not be applicable
> to downstreams that make huge modifications.
>
> It might be beneficial though to have an agreement with MoFo that
> allows for downstreams of Debian to also use the name, as long as
> they only modify the package in ways similar to Debian. If you
> have a downstream that just copies, or copies-and-fixes-bugs, this
> would surely be just as acceptable to MoFo, right?
No. This is not what free software is about ("only modifiying the
package in ways similar to Debian"). We should do the hard work
(strip the trademarks) so the community can benefit from our
already-stripped mozillas and do whatever it wants with them. This
seems to be more like the Debian Way to me.
--
HTH,
Massa
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