Re: Bug#265352: grub: Debian splash images for Grub

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

The work is not a trademark.  The work bears a trademark.  Much as
with the patent issue, keeping your intuition about copyright licenses
and carrying them into the trademark domain will lead you to confusing
and incorrect conclusions.

For example, if you draw a spiral-and-bottle like the Debian logo
right now on a Windows CD, that infringes Debian's trademark -- even
if you've never seen a Debian logo before.  The chain of modification
and derivation which applies to copyright cases isn't used here, and
reserved rights don't stop with that chain -- they leap across into
other works.

So the fact that the holder of the swirl-and-bottle and Open Use swirl
logo trademarks happens to also hold the copyright for them isn't
particularly important.  The works can and should be (and have been?)
put under a free license.  That is, their copyrights should be freely
licensed.

The trademark rights are entirely separate, and there's no reason for
Debian to license them in any way other than "Free for use if there's
no confusion with Debian, either because they refer to Debian or
because they're in a domain where Debian does no business."

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu