* Gervase Markham (gerv@mozilla.org) wrote: > Eric Dorland wrote: > >>>Now then, I personally will not accept any deal that is Debian > >>>specific. > >> > >>Absolutely reasonable - it would be entirely against DFSG #8. > > > >Umm, I don't understand. You'd like to make a deal but you recognize > >that we can't under DFSG #8? That seems very paradoxical to me. > > What I meant was that your stance is absolutely reasonable. I quite > understand that you don't want any deal that is Debian-specific. In any > case, such a deal wouldn't be acceptable under DFSG #8. > > I hope that clarifies things :-) > > >>>Whether or not this is actually against DFSG #8 or not is > >>>beside the point, I don't want to play if it's only because we're the > >>>popular kid. This problem goes beyond Debian. Other distributions are > >>>not going to be able to use the trademark license as written. Are you > >>>going to cut deals with Fedora, Slackware and Gentoo as well? > >> > >>Absolutely. Ubuntu have already been in touch, and are watching the > >>discussion closely. And I worked out a deal with Gentoo several months > >>ago. > > > >And what were the specifics of the deal you reached with Gentoo? It > >seems Gentoo would be a big problem for your QA issues since Gentoo is > >designed to allow you to compile it with crazy optimizations. > > The default Gentoo build is extremely like ours - much more so than > Debian's - and uses sane compiler settings. Like the proposed agreement > here, Gentoo are not responsible for people who redistribute their stuff > with crazy options (although, of course, that's much rarer with Gentoo > than with Debian - distributing binaries isn't their thing ;-). Such > people would have to get a trademark licence from us, too, just like > Debian distributors. > > (I believe Gentoo actually distribute with the official logos, too, but > they are tied to a particular configuration in the ebuild system, and > automatically get "unbuilt" if the build configuration changes. Very nifty.) Interesting. What about the case of Fedora? They've applied even more patches than Debian has to their package (at least it looked that way from what I saw). They certainly don't fall under the current trademark license. Have you approached them with an agreement? > >>I'm open to talking to anyone. I'm hoping that what comes out of this > >>discussion is a fairly general trademark permission that we can execute > >>with anyone who convinces us that they aren't going to ship rubbish with > >>our name on. > > > >Right, but the fact is they need to seek you out to get that > >permission, rather than it being in the Trademark License > >itself. Define exactly what constitutes "rubbish" in the trademark > >license, and allow anyone who is !"rubbish" to use your trademark. > > That's what the current "Community Edition" requirements try to do. But, > as I understand it, restrictions of that form are incompatible with the > DFSG, as well as practically very difficult. They are certainly practically very difficult, but they need not be that exhaustively precise. I certainly believe the Mozilla Foundation is acting in good faith. If the Mozilla Foundation puts the general things down it wants in the Trademark License and they apply equally to everyone, I don't see any reason we need to get too bogged down in details and semantics. I'm not sure why you think this would be against the DFSG. If trademarks were already against the DFSG we wouldn't be having this discussion. > The two possible approaches to this both have practical problems. > > If you try to enumerate all the things a person _cannot_ do if they want > to use the trademark, you leave yourself open to not thinking of > something they could do to screw things up. > > If you try and enumerate all the things a person can do and still keep > using the trademark, you run into the problem that people always want to > do different things. We've taken the second approach with the Community > Edition stuff and, sure enough, Debian wants to do different things. Well with due respect the Community Edition clause is going to be completely useless to any distro. I mean you can't even backport a security fix under it. > So the only sensible way to manage this is to have a general policy > which hopefully covers most people (the Community Edition stuff) but to > negotiate on a per-instance basis with people who want to do something > different (Debian, Gentoo, etc.). Well I think Debian, Gentoo, etc. represent rather a large proportion of who will be distributing your software. Doesn't it make sense to include those people in your Trademark License (Trademark Policy, whatever)? I dare say if you can please us then no one else will be as strict :) > Perhaps you can see where I'm coming from if you think of the most > complex piece of software you've written, pretend that when it starts > up, it puts up a big "written by Eric Dorland" message, and try and > write down all the things you would like people not to do to it and > still have your name on the front. I understand what you're saying, and that's why you've sought protection for your mark. In general we don't concern ourselves with trademarks since they're generally easy to circumvent (ie, rename things) if the mark holder objects to our using the name. However, you've formalized things with your Trademark Policy. And we will do our best to abide by your wishes in that document. As the document stands we can't use your marks. If you'd like us to, (and I would like that very much), then you need to put the provisions in the trademark license, where anyone can use them. If I did have a trademark on "Eric Dorland", and I didn't like what someone was doing with it, I could ask them (legally) to stop. I don't need a Trademark License to enforce that. > >>Would you prefer a set of technical requirements? I haven't gone down > >>that path precisely because of the large number of DFSG issues it would > >>immediately raise. > > > >I'm not sure why that would cause DFSG difficulties, it would still > >only apply to trademark. It would be wonderful if you could define in > >technical terms what it means to be "Firefox" and allow anyone who > >meets those requirements to use the name. > > (I've outlined the problems with this sort of approach above.) > > >>In contrast, my proposal contains provisions for all of the things in > >>your bulleted list. It's really very hands-off. > > > >Right, but your proposal is Debian specific. It needs to be a more > >general proposal that can be included in the Trademark License so that > >anyone can abide by them. > > It's Debian-specific only in that Debian is the first group we've tried > to come to this sort of arrangement with. As I said, an agreement of > that form would be available to others. If you like, I could > parameterise the agreement even before Debian agrees to it. Right, but the term "agreement" smacks of a contract. We don't do so well with contracts. We need a license, that grants us rights if we meet certain requirements. If you want us to the marks, you need to put requirements we can accept in the trademark license. -- 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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