Re: AbiWord, trademarks, and DFSG-freeness

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

> On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 12:48:09 -0400 Raul Miller wrote:
> > But not basic logic about "permission to modify".  Instead, basic
> > logic about "what do trademark restrictions mean".
> > 
> > I don't see that trademark prohibitions can affect whether a GPLed
> > program is DFSG free or not.

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 11:37:48PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote:
> Could you elaborate this further?

Well, I already elaborated on it quite a bit (and raised some questions)
in the message you replied to.  I don't know if that content was
uninteresting to you or if there is some other reason you want me to
elaborate without any indication of your thoughts on those issues.

However, let's take AbiWord as an example.  We've been told that we do
not have a license to use "AbiWord" on derivative works.  We're clearly
not required to retain "AbiWord" on those works.

The question is: if we remove the trademarks that label the work, is
the work then DFSG free?

It seems unlikely that work (A) which GPLed but is not trademarked
"AbiWord" would be more or less DFSG-free than work (B) which is GPLed
but is not trademarked "AbiWord".

The only issue to contradict this that I can think of is copyright notices
and change logs, which we are supposed to leave intact.  But, trademarks
which appear in those notices aren't trademarks on the software, they
are trademarks that refer to the authors or copyright holders, or to
works from which code was obtained.

> If you are right, I think we would be able to deal with the unfortunate
> Debian logo issue in a much easier way.

I don't know what problem you're trying to talk about.

Thanks,

-- 
Raul