On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:07:17 +0200 Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> If you've ever stumbled upon http://www.debian.org/trademark , you might
> be aware that, as a project, we've been working on a proper trademark
> policy since quite a while.
>
> I'm happy to attach a first complete draft of such a policy, and I'm
> looking for comment on it.
[...]
Stefano,
first of all, thanks for working on this issue, especially taking into
account that the outcome could be a hopefully acceptable trademark
policy and a DFSG-free Open Use Logo "with Debian", as you mentioned in
your latest "bit from the DPL" message [1]:
| - to stop the absurdity of not using the official logo ("with Debian")
| as part of our official theme, I advanced a bit on the topic of
| relicensing the logo under a DFSG-free license. I sought a second
| legal advice to SFLC (as requested by the SPI board). They confirm we
| can safely do the relicensing (without undermining our rights on
| contained marks) under a license like dual LGPLv3+ / CC-BY-SA,
| provided that a suitable trademark policy is in place …
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/08/msg00001.html
Before commenting on the draft trademark policy, I would like to ask
why it was suggested to dual license the Open Use Logo "with Debian"
under LGPLv3+ / CC-by-sa.
Why not under the Expat license, as the Open Use Logo "without Debian"?
Maybe a copyleft better protects the trademarked text?
I am not sure I understand why...
Anyway, as long as a copyleft is needed, I think that a LGPLv3+ /
CC-by-sa dual license would be a poor choice, since it's
GPLv3-compatible, but GPLv2-incompatible.
I don't think the Debian Project should prevent its Open Use Logo from
being embedded into a GPLv2-licensed work.
I would suggest at least licensing under LGPLv2.1+ ...
As far as the draft policy is concerned, I don't especially like the
restriction on commercial merchandising:
[...]
> \item You can make t-shirts, desktop wallpapers, caps, or other merchandise
> with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{non-commercial usage}. You can also make
> merchandise with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{commercial usage} provided that,
> in addition to following the guidelines listed below, you truthfully
> advertise to customers which part of the selling price will be donated to the
> DEBIAN project. See \texttt{http://www.debian.org/donations} for more
> information on how to donate to the DEBIAN project.
I think the "provided that" should be demoted to a non-binding
"we kindly request".
[...]
> \item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way.
[...]
> \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo.
>
> \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors.
[...]
These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian
logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes).
Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably
in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the
very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]).
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they
seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles.
P.S.: I am not subscribed to debian-project, so please Cc me on
replies. Thanks.
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