On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 03:24:37AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > On 2004-04-17 10:16:22 +0100 Benj. Mako Hill <mako@debian.org> wrote: > >On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 07:16:02PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > >>Anyway, do you really want to persecute businesses who promote > >>Debian to their customers? > > > >What we want to avoid is having people use the Debian mark to > >capitalize off the goodwill created by the Debian project to sell > >their own service, support, servers, etc. and to reflect poorly upon > >the project when they screw up. > > Let's be clear on this: promoting one's own services as Debian is > impersonation/passing-off or whatever and seems clearly illegal > regardless of the trademark. Promoting services of/for installation of > Debian systems is not. Absolutely. What's not always clear is where promoting a Debian *based* service or product ends and where promoting one's service *as* Debian begin. This probably wouldn't be common enough to worry about except that there's often a lot to gain from having people confused in this way. > >A Debian-desktop domain name seems like it might incorrectly lead > >people to this association. > > I think neither rendition of the site that I saw was likely to make > someone think that they were buying from Debian. It would be nice to > have a clearer explanation of the relationship and some more links > back, though. I took a quick look at the site and I tend to agree with you. In either case, it seems worth running by our lawyer working on trademark issues and seeing where this goes from there. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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