Re: Ongoing Firefox (and Thunderbird) Trademark problems
On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 06:51:51PM +0200, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Cesar Martinez Izquierdo <dispiste@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> So, in this paragraph you are basically stating that we *should*
> >> rename firefox to save them from such burden.
> >
> > No, I think we should NOT rename Firefox to save our *direct* users
> > from such burden. A lot of people would get greatly confused with a
> > different name for Firefox, even if you don't think so.
> >
> > *Indirect* users such as derived distributions should check the
> > licenses and other trademark or patent issues before start
> > distributing anything. It's their task to check it. We can help them
> > if we create Debian packages which are easy to rename, but we
> > shouldn't confuse the rest of the users just to make this task
> > easier to derived distributions.
>
> With this reasoning, firefox must go to non-free -- because everything
> in main is guaranteed to be freely distributable by anyone, anywhere.
Doesn't follow.
Everything in main is guaranteed to be freely distributable.
Everything in main is guaranteed to be freely modifiable.
A combination of the two is also guaranteed.
However, that doesn't mean you don't have to check the license. For
instance, some software requires you to provide source and/or a change
log of your changes; other software does not. You will have to check
this when you modify the software anyway; trade marks are no different.
--
The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
pavement is precisely one bananosecond
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