Re: Proposed vote on issue of the day: trademarks and free software
Russ Allbery dijo [Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 01:56:32PM -0700]:
> That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that we should not take
> positions on general political matters around free software that don't
> affect us. This is for a variety of reasons:
>
> * lack of competence (other organizations are better at this, I think)
Debian's people (i.e. debian-legal and so, even equiped with all the
TINLA and IANAL disclaimers) are a well regarded and quite well
informed body in this regard.
> * lack of standing (why should someone care about our opinion?)
Because we are the largest Free Software project there is by many
metrics, and among the most successful by many others? (yes, label me
as subjective a person as you want ;-) )
> * dilution of effort in the project
One of Debian's (or Debian members') goals is to further advance (our
understanding of) Free Software. Of course, our main goal should help
towards releasing Lenny. But we often fight on many fronts!
> * dilution of authority (less likely people will listen when we're affected)
Cannot understand this point.
> * lack of insight (we may not be privy to relevant information)
This is why I'm not seconding Wouter's text. I'm about to leave my
office right now, and I'd like to have a more Mozilla-neutral text,
that raises the issues on abusing trademarks, but without pointing
fingers - We don't want to make Mozilla look bad (after all, they are
still Good Guys (tm) after all!). We do want others not to follow
their steps.
What do you say if we add to this case, i.e., Tuomo Valkonen's
enforcement on his trademark on ion3 [1] disallowing us to distribute
it with the version _we_ accept into _our_ stable releases and with
the patches _we_ want to add? It already bit us and Arch Linux, at
least.
> I would support, in the abstract, the Debian Project making a statement
> about software patents because software patents *do* affect us. I can
> point to concrete examples of useful software which we've had trouble
> packaging or distributing because of software patents. Ideally such a
> statement would focus on those specifics, since that's our area of
> expertise and the place where we can add useful new information.
Would you agree to second a text which, in the abstract, makes a
statement against abusing (while recognizes the _fair_ use of)
trademarks?
BTW... Can we trust we won't have similar problems for the
redhat-cluster-source / redhat-cluster-suite / redhat-cluster-modules
packages? (I am unaware of their specifics)
[1] Several URLs for a single point ;-)
http://www.mail-archive.com/ion-general@lists.berlios.de/msg02299.html
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/tur-users/2007-April/004634.html
http://osdir.com/ml/linux.arch.tur.user/2007-04/msg00155.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ion3/+bug/115142
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