<quote who="MJ Ray" date="Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 02:54:14AM +0100"> > Benj. Mako Hill <mako@debian.org> wrote: > > [...] a group of us decided a number of years ago to keep > > consumers (and developers) from being confused by ensuring that > > "Debian" referred only to our project and to our products. [...] > > There are alternatives that some people support (e.g., allowing anyone > > to call anything Debian) but we've decided not to pursue that path at > > the moment. > > Thank you for the news that no other paths are being pursued. M.J., since the trademark committee was created, you are the *only* Debian developer who has actively argued for giving up the mark and making Debian a generic. I'm sure other people would support it but I just don't see support for the complete alternative that you have advocated in the past. > I am disappointed that a "general trademark policy" based on the > DFSG is not being studied, but any clearer terms would be welcome. The stated goal of the trademark committee was to come up a policy that was as permissive as possible (in the DFSG sense) while still operating within what is required by trademark law. Unlike copyright, failing to enforce or taking a completely permissive attitude toward a trademark will actually lead you to lose it. That may be fine with some in the project but my sense from reading this thread and others is that most people in the project like having Debian refer to stuff made by the Debian project and not to anything by anybody. > Does this mean that spi-trademark is now elaborating the existing > policy, rather than drafting a new one? No. It's still a goal to draft a policy. The trademark committee has been distracted from writing a policy by a very long list of international disputes, trademark licenses, international registration and other actions I'm not remembered. > When and where will spi-trademark report next? There are periodic reports on trademark related issues to spi-private, spi-general and (more frequently) spi-board. > Will it contribute to the 2005 SPI Annual Report? It's not a bad idea. I was actively traveling when the report was annual drafted and didn't think of it. It is probably too late to get into the most recently release but an update would be good. > Can you forecast when it will present a policy to spi-board? Help is certainly desired. If you help, it will be sooner. :) Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.cc/
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