The thread is petering out and as much as I had hoped Matthew Garrett and MJ Ray would go 12 rounds of bare-knuckle boxing, it's time to make some decisions. Some very smart developers have come forward to say that trademarks don't matter with respect to free software. Unfortunately, I'm still unconvinced that we should be willing to make certain compromises to use a projects trademarks. Certainly it is clear the name associated with a project is important, considering how many objected to renaming Firefox. There is also very little guidance in what would be acceptable trademark restrictions for a free software project. I hope there can still be some dialog within Debian and hopefully come up with some guidelines that developers can accept. I also hope to put the trademark question to RMS when he's here in Montreal next week. So, I don't feel I can accept the agreement offered by the Mozilla Foundation, because of my objections to it and because I don't feel empowered to make an agreement like this on behalf of Debian. If however, the DPL wished to step forward and broker such a deal I would not oppose (he is our elected representative for the project after all). If the DPL does not step forward to make some sort of agreement, what will I do? Renaming seems to be a very unpopular option. So I believe my best option is to ignore the trademark policy altogether and have the Mozilla Foundation tell us when they want us to stop using their marks. Now I originally said we shouldn't do this, but it does have certain advantages. First of all, I think we can ignore the trademark policy because it is only a policy, is not distributed with the software (although having said that, that might change) and it is my understanding that in most jurisdictions the trademark holder has to police use of their trademark anyway. Now the advantage of doing this is foremost to not have to rename Firefox unless the MoFo ask us to. There is also protects us from looking like the bad guy in the case of a rename (eg the /. headline will read "MoFo tells Debian not to use 'Firefox'" rather than "Free software nuts stop using 'Firefox'"). Of course the other advantage is not having to make an agreement that I think compromises our principles. Of course the disadvantage would be that by ignoring the issue we're implicitly agreeing to the MoFo's proposal. The MoFo may apply their trademark policy to entities just as deserving as Debian, and they will be told they can't use the marks because they are not as popular as us. I will be on the lookout for any such instance, and will bring the issue up again if I see it happening. Hopefully this will make everyone happy (or at least equally unhappy), but I think it is the best compromise for the time being, until at least better policies are worked out with regard to trademarks. -- 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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