Re: trademark policy draft
Thijs Kinkhorst writes ("Re: trademark policy draft"):
> On Wed, August 1, 2012 18:54, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we
> > should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just
> > creating a better usage policy.
I would not be in favour of this.
I think it is perfectly fine for Debian to have and enforce trademarks
on our name and logo. There is nothing stopping people using other
names and othe rlogos.
> Of course there are some imaginable uses of a trademark: to protect
> against bad guys misrepresenting us. We have to balance this potential
> future possible benefit against the current costs, policy and hassle these
> trademarks bring us and more notably people wanting to do good things
> based on Debian. [...]
What costs and hassle do these trademarks impose on people wanting to
do good things based on Debian ? All it requires is that they don't
pretend that they have our endorsement.
Of course a corrollary is that nothing in Debian should be branded
with Debian trademarks in a way that means someone deriving from
Debian without our permission is supposed to fiddle about with
branding. If there are any such cases they are bugs and should be
dealt with as such.
Our reputation is valuable and I don't want to see people trading on
it (whether in commerce or otherwise) without our permission.
Ian.
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