On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 10:28:32PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:12:37 +0000 Andrew Suffield wrote:Formally stated, it's approximately "trademarks cannot make a work strictly non-free, but you may have to replace all instances of the trademark with something else". Depending on circumstances, this may be an implicit change-the-name clause (which is okay), or it may be some trivial but boring work required to generate a free package.The former is DFSG-free in the first place, the latter can be made DFSG-free (by stripping all trademark instances, a part from the name) but is non-free (before the `operation'). Is that what you mean?
Would I be correct in saying that as long as copyright is not infringed, it is fine to distribute art that is used as a trademark, as long as you do not use it as a trademark. As a concrete example, if I were to distribute 'foo Linux', that contained a package "debian-open-use-logo : 'this is the Debian open-use logo; it is a trademark of debian'", this would be fine as long as I did not use the logo to brand my distribution?
Also, is it not permissible to do something like 'This distribution is derived from @Debian', much like the way many webservers have 'powered by Apache'? Is it not only when you start misrepresenting ('passing off') your software /as/ Debian that trademarks become an issue?
If this is the case, then Debian could make itself easy to rebrand by ensuring that all uses of the Debian logo to brand the distribution are in one location; distributing it is fine, so no-one would have to worry about accidentally shipping one (as long as the copyright license is Free).
(See also the thread 'Drawings similar to well known products. Copyright problems?' at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00300.html )
-- Lewis Jardine IANAL, IANADD