Re: Proposed vote on issue of the day: trademarks and free software
Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org> writes:
> 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.
That's not the sort of competence that I'm talking about (although I don't
have as strong of an opinion of Debian's legal expertise as that). I'm
rather talking about PR competence: the ability to make a statement in a
way that's effective, that achieves our goal rather than making us look
silly, that is interpreted the way we intend it by the target and by the
press, and so forth. I don't think this is an area of competency for
Debian (nor do I think it needs to be given what Debian normally focuses
on).
One can certainly argue whether the FSF is any good at this or not as
well, but they at least spend a lot more time thinking about it than we do
at a governance level.
>> * dilution of authority (less likely people will listen when we're affected)
> Cannot understand this point.
It's the "boy who cried wolf" effect. If we regularly make political
statements and we aren't focused and specific about how we do it, I think
it will lead people to tend to ignore them as "more Debian ranting." If
we make political statements about things we're not involved in, people
get used to assuming that our political statements aren't about things
that are directly relevant to Debian. I think we dilute the attention
people are willing to pay to us and the sense of Debian as a body worth
listening to when it speaks.
We currently aren't making many of these statements, so this is a mostly
theoretical concern at present.
> 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.
That would make me much more comfortable, as would talking about the
specific issues that led us to rename Firefox to Iceweasel in the first
place (although that may be water too far under the bridge to warrant
bringing up again).
> Would you agree to second a text which, in the abstract, makes a
> statement against abusing (while recognizes the _fair_ use of)
> trademarks?
I'm not positive that now is a great time to make such a statement, but
yes, I'd at least consider it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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