Re: Debian logos and trademarks

[Bastian Venthur <venthur@debian.org>]

Anthony Towns schrieb:
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 10:03:52AM +0100, Bastian Venthur wrote:
>> I have a question. If I understand you correctly you want to put the
>> "official use" logo under the MIT license AND enforce it as an
>> unregistered trademark so that someone can only use it if "we" (who?)
>> authorize it. This sounds contradicting to me and how does this meet the
>> DFSG?
> 
> The DFSG refers to copyright licensing, it doesn't cover patents or
> trademarks. The difference between trademarks and copyright, is that
> copyright covers all copies and derivatives, while trademarks cover
> anything that's confusingly similar. So if you independently create a
> logo that looks confusingly similar, you need a trademark license but
> not a copyright license; while if you create a derived works that's not
> similar at all, you need a copyright license, but not a trademark license.
> 
> Having a restrictive trademark license prevents people from using
> confusingly similar logos, while a DFSG-free copyright license allows
> people to make derivatives as long as they're not confusingly similar.

Doesn't that smell like non-free?

I'm still confused. What I meant was the contradiction between MIT
license AND "someone can only use it if we authorize it":

       Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
       obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
       files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
       including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
       publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
       and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
       subject to the following conditions:

To make it clearer:

Permission is hereby granted [...] to *any* person [...] to deal in the
Software *without restriction*, including without limitation the rights
to *use* [...] the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software
is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

vs

"someone can only use it if we authorize it"

See what I mean? Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but isn't
that a contradiction?

And for the DFSG: Doesn't "someone can only use it if we authorize it"
contradict to "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" and
"License Must Not Be Specific to Debian"?


Cheers,

Bastian

-- 
Bastian Venthur                                      http://venthur.de
Debian Developer                                 venthur at debian org