Re: GPL-2+ with additional trademark spice
On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 07:14:43AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Mihai Moldovan <ionic@ionic.de> writes:
>
> > While working on a package (not yet part of Debian), I noticed the following
> > copyright and license notice:
>
> Thank you for posting the full text of the grant of license.
>
> > # This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use,
> > # modify, copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of
> > # the GNU General Public License v.2, or (at your option) any later version.
> > […] Any Red Hat trademarks that are incorporated in the
> > # source code or documentation are not subject to the GNU General Public
> > # License and may only be used or replicated with the express permission of
> > # Red Hat, Inc.
>
> This is confusing, because the GNU GPL v2 has no mention of trademark. I
> would advise the copyright holder to phrase this in terms of what the
> GPL actually permits or forbids.
(Red Hat lawyer here)
This is a really old form of Red Hat license notice. It predates my
original joining of Red Hat in 2008, even though, if this is about the
Spice project (https://www.spice-space.org/), that project did not
exist as such until after 2008. As soon as I became aware of it I got
rid of it as an internally-recommended license notice.
If anyone wants to submit a patch to the project proposing that this
language be replaced -- say, with the FSF-recommended language
contained in GPLv2 -- I will be supportive. (Since it doesn't strike
me as the most egregious or important problem in the world and I have
a lot of other things to do at the moment I am not likely to act on
this myself in the short term.)
Richard
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