<quote who="MJ Ray" date="Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 12:36:13AM +0100"> > There is a desirable position more liberal than the current > almost-no- -commercial-use do you agree? I think we should be as permissive as we can be and as close the spirit of sharing and reuse in free software while still keeping our users from being confused and while operating within the realm of trademark law -- a realm that the DFSG was never designed to address. I think this is only one area the current "policy" needs to be improved. > > > I am disappointed that a "general trademark policy" based on the > > > DFSG is not being studied, but any clearer terms would be welcome. > > The stated goal of the trademark committee was to come up a policy > > that was as permissive as possible (in the DFSG sense) while still > > operating within what is required by trademark law. > > I thought the stated goal was to elaborate the existing policy > or develop a new "open use" trademark policy. If the open use > policy is not possible, doesn't that leave only elaborate? The last policy was written by Bruce very quickly for a mailing list. It's served us reasonably well I suppose so I think it's worth looking at but I've never been an advocate on putting that as the place to start except to look at what we don't like when we discuss a new policy. :) > > Unlike copyright, failing to enforce or taking a completely > > permissive attitude toward a trademark will actually lead you to > > lose it. > > We have many users of the debian name running around, > some told to the project. The previous DPL stated the present > trademark policy is "never enforced properly"[1] and also kept > a list of known violations. Have we lost it yet or how much > longer before we lose it? We've followed up on a number of violations in the last years and, under legal council, decided that some were not infringing and let them be. Of the ones we've followed up, many have been fixed and at least one trademark license has been drafted (although that wasn't in response to a violation). > > That may be fine with some in the project but my sense from > > reading this thread and others is that most people in the project > > like having Debian refer to stuff made by the Debian project and > > not to anything by anybody. > > Is that incompatible with a trademark licence following DFSG? > (It's not current practice, anyway.) I don't know. I assumed (perhaps inaccurately) that you were implying it wasn't in the message I replied to. >>> When and where will spi-trademark report next? > > > There are periodic reports on trademark related issues to spi-private, > > spi-general and (more frequently) spi-board. > > Cool. What's the period? I've looked back over 2005 for private and > general and didn't spot one. This year has been quieter than the last two years. It may be that most of this has been on spi-trademark and spi-board (both closed except or list members) in which case a report of the kind you are advocating is certainly in order. There was, at least at first, a representative of Debian on the SPI trademark committee. I'd have to look at the resolution to find out what that was. I was the SPI Board representative. > When and where will spi-trademark report next? This hasn't been discussed this with Greg, the SPI board, or the rest of the committee. Let's talk on SPI trademark and find out how we can get something (a report, a new agenda, etc) ASAP. If you're willing to help, it will be sooner. I suspect any report would first be sent to the SPI Board and the DPL and then to both the spi-general and to this list. > > Help is certainly desired. If you help, it will be sooner. :) > > Help how? By joining the email list? Please ask spi-trademark-owner, > then. I think there may be a problem with mailman, as I received two > confirmation request emails to my most recent subscribe request. Seems like a good start. I'll look into it. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.cc/
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