* Adrian von Bidder (avbidder@fortytwo.ch) wrote: > On Tuesday 14 June 2005 16.20, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote: > > * Towns :: > > > > Does calling it "firefox" or "thunderbird" hurt "free software"? > > > > At first, no. But it *does* hurt our users. Why? Because they are > > confident that getting something from the Debian mirror, modifying > > it and re-distributing under the same terms is allowed. And they can > > be burned after some time. And they *will* blame it on Debian. > > DFSG 4 again: it is grudgingly allowed that people are required to rename > what they get from Debian. People seem to be using DFSG 4 as a justification for keeping the name, but I believe that is flawed. DFSG 4 allows for a license to say "if you meet conditions X, you can use our name, otherwise you can't". So the TeX guys have a test suite and specifications that you have to pass to call the software TeX. What if the license said "You can call the program TeX if it's part of Debian". Would we still call it TeX? Clearly that's a violation of DFSG #8. Should we allow it? I don't think #4 should be used to bypass another one of the guidelines. Now in the Mozilla case we're not talking about software licenses, we're talking about trademarks, which makes things murkier. But the principles should still apply. We're being offered a Debian specific deal. I don't think #8 allows us to do that, even if it is permissible under #4. -- Eric Dorland <eric.dorland@mail.mcgill.ca> ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: hooty@jabber.com 1024D/16D970C6 097C 4861 9934 27A0 8E1C 2B0A 61E9 8ECF 16D9 70C6 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s++: a-- C+++ UL+++ P++ L++ E++ W++ N+ o K- w+ O? M++ V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R tv++ b+++ DI+ D+ G e h! r- y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
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