In <[🔎] 200909240232.52013.variosinftk@gmail.com>, Manolete, ese artista... wrote: >Discussing with a friend about that Iceweasel vs Firefox bizantine issue he > told me something I didn't believe till today when I read it on KDE's > forum: Amarok's logo is also copyrighted. Virtually all software (and data) in the Debian repositories are copyrighted, by various persons and organizations. In fact, you have to assert copyright on something if you are going to grant Debian a license for it. The question is: What license(s) cover(s) the Amarok logo? If it is under some sort of "no derivatives allowed" license, it can't be in "main", and it is an RC bug that should be filed. If it is under a more free license, (various spring to mind) then it is fine in "main". The firefox/iceweasel (etc.) issue was about trademarks -- specifically the name (not the logo) "Thunderbird" which is trademarked by the Mozilla foundation and, therefore, has restrictions on it's use. Debian has chosen not to abide by those restrictions so it must use a different name for the software, either a non-trademarked term or one with restrictions that Debian will abide. While the logo may also be trademarked (and is most certainly copyrighted) the issue was originally about the name of the software. The source code for firefox is also copyrighted, but the license Debian uses for it (GPLv2) only makes restrictions allowed by the DFSG. Branding could be *very* important in the future for F(L)OSS. Besides Mozilla products and Chrome/Chromium, I can imagine other project deciding to legally brand their software, not necessarily out of a profit motive, but rather so that their project is not "blamed"/"tarnished" when bugs are introduced downstream. The requirement to rename is just a more specific version of clearly denoting what changes Debian makes to the original authors' source, which is clearly allowed under the DFSG. It may be that Amarok (or other software) needs to be renamed (or re-logo'd) in the future, but it is still free software. Even Debian itself has a "brand" that it does not distribute under a DFSG-free license: the Debian official-use logo. The project knew this was a possible concern when the logo was being developed, which is why we also have the Debian open-use logo (which is the swirl everyone recognizes). -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.