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Re: Moodle trademark



On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 08:53:44PM -0600, Morgan Gangwere wrote:
> On 9/12/2010 8:42 PM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Simply put, a trademark license, even a restrictive one, has no impact on
> > DFSG compliance because it's unrelated to whether or not you use the
> > software in question.

> PMI, but isn't that exactly opposite the reasoning behind the
> Firefox/Iceweasel rebrand?

The iceweasel rebranding was done in response to a restrictive *copyright*
license on the firefox logo.  This combined with the hard-line stance taken
by upstream regarding the use of their name led the maintainer to decide
that the best course of action was to rename the package; but the rename was
done at the maintainer's discretion, only the firefox logo was actually a
DFSG problem.

> > Also, please don't ask trademark holders for permission to package software
> > under the trademarked name; this only leads to the confused belief that we
> > *need* such permission to use trademarks as package names, and we don't.

> Isn't it a good idea to CYA when you're not sure? Or has Debian taken an
> Ask for forgiveness later rather than permission now policy?

If you want to CYA wrt legalities, you should be asking Debian *legal
counsel* for advice regarding how to handle it - not running off and asking
for permission for things we already have a right to do.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org

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