Re: trademark licenses and DFSG: a summary
Stefano Zacchiroli <leader@debian.org>
> Going through the above, I suspect that the first provision (extending
> DFSG §4) might be controversial. But the more I think of it, the more
> convinced I am that it'd be in the spirit of the current wording of DFSG
> §4, as hinted by the title of DFSG §4. In fact, renaming alone is
> already the most common case of trademark-like restriction and agreeing
> to extend it to visual marks wouldn't change anything in term of actual
> restrictions on our users.
Yes, I think the first provision is a shame and I'm disappointed that
we're not willing to go to bat for nominative use to include basic
packaging for and integration with debian, even if it means patching
the software. However, given the lawyer opinions that have been
reported, I'm willing to accept it. I trust that we can still mention
the upstream heritage names in descriptions, so that users can at least
find the renamed software in search results.
Of course, I'm very happy that silly things like function-renaming
are generally not accepted, and that we keep on showing solidarity
with derived distributions by not accepting debian-specific licences.
Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/
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