Re: Inbound trademark policy, round 3
Ian Jackson wrote:
> 1. DFSG principles should apply.
IMO taking this as a starting point is completely wrong. DFSG guarantees
that incompetent and malicious people may freely modify the software.
For trademarks to have any meaning at all, distributing those modified
versions under the original trademark must not be allowed. DFSG
principles should not be applied to trademarks; if you insist on
applying them, then the only consistent position is to completely reject
any use of trademarks whatsoever.
Trademarks can be viewed as a legally (rather than technically) enforced
form of authentication. Allowing any downstream to freely use trademarks
makes about as much sense as allowing any downstream to freely sign
their modified packages with Debian archive signing keys.
> 2. No Debian-specific licences; freedom to make changes.
While I can see the rationale for wishing to avoid Debian-specific
licenses, I doubt adding such a restriction would ultimately be
beneficial. In practice, trying to codify software quality requirements
is just too hard. Trusting (and occasionally verifying) the competence
of a known team is a lot more practical. The alternative to
distro-specific licenses wouldn't be more downstream freedom but no
distro-level freedom for anyone; and I don't think Debian preemptively
renaming everything would be in the interest of most downstreams either.
Reply to: