* Thomas Viehmann (tv@beamnet.de) wrote: > Martin Michlmayr wrote: > > "Trusted Debian" was an open source project too and yet the Debian > > project felt their use of the "DEBIAN" mark wasn't appropriate. There > > is an effort going on to update the trademark policy (which will also > > make it clearer that it's not just about businesses). > > Maybe it would be great to come up with something that can be used by > everyone interested. I'm thinking along the lines granting a license to > use "Debian derived" as part of the name for products / efforts to > create products derived from Debian, so that "Debian derived trusted > Gnu/Linux" or "Consortium for a Debian derived core" would be covered. > OK, now it's time to admit that I'm not a marketing expert and the > examples offered do suck, but maybe it's a good idea. After all, we do > like derived distros to reference Debian... This sounds like something reasonable to do in terms of a trademark policy but there's a couple problems with it. If 'Debian derived' actually falls under trademark requirements at all (I'm not sure it does) and, if it does, then people still need to ask Debian/SPI for an official submark before using it. Basically, that kind of a policy is fine, but doesn't remove the need for Debian/SPI to protect its trademarks. I havn't mentioned this before but I get the impression, at least from LMI, that creating submarks and handling the licenseing of such probably requires some amount of a lawyer's time and I'm not 100% sure it'd really be fair to ask someone to do that pro-bono. In the end we may have to establish a setup similar to LMI. I don't like it, but I like the idea of Microsoft selling 'Ultimate Debian' much, much less. Stephen
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