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Re: standard fonts and euro



On 15.V.2001 at 17:11 Mo McKinlay wrote:
> 
>   > I didn't mean that we must stop to use the trademarks like `Linux'. But
>   > free programs *must not depend* on that trademark.  If I am not allowed
>   > to distribute an unofficicial kernel and name it `Linux' that is OK.
>   > But if free programs stop to work because my kernel is not named `Linux'
>   > that is not OK.
> 
> Most things look at what the kernel is called (via uname(2)) in order to
> determine the system. If you change it from 'Linux' to 'LinuxOS' (for
> example), you'll see lots of things stop working, not least config.guess
> and config.sub.

I suppose that is not a problem.  Some CPUs imitate Intels CPUs in their
authentication commands.  The important is that on the market they don't
use the name `Intel'.  I suppose I am allowed to make an unofficial
kernel which uname returns Linux.  I used that as an example.  

I wrote that free programs must not depend on trademarks.  That means
that free programs must not make other programs non-free.

> A blanket policy for trademarks based on an isolated issue (fonts) would
> be silly IMHO.

No.  The kernel was not good example, but I think it is clean that we
don't want to be forced to use unmodified programs because of the
trademarks.

Anton Zinoviev, zinoviev@debian.org



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