Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>A Free logo, like any other Free image or Free work in general, must be >>usable for any purpose. > > It is, provided you modify it sufficiently. You could use it to make > your own trademark, for example.
That is not sufficient. A Free logo, like any other Free image or Free work in general, must be usable for any purpose, *either modified or unmodified*. > On the other hand, if you take the source code to GCC and format it > into the shape of a Coca Cola trademark, then you can't use it for > selling soft drinks. Does this mean that GCC is not free? No, no more than the fact that you can't modify the source to GCC to contain the source to Visual C++ (even independently of the fact that GCC is copyleft; I'm referring to the fact that you can't distribute the source of Visual C++). >> If this right is restricted, whether by >>copyright, patent, trademark, or any other law, then the work is non-free. > > Should this include criminal law, such as laws against murder? :-) Yes :). If, in your license, you prohibited the use of your software to break a law, that would technically be a non-free license. See the FSF page on the HESSLA <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.html> for a very similar example that actually happened. See also libdvdcss, a piece of software that is Free Software in all jurisdictions except the United States, in which its use is restricted by ridiculous laws. (Of course, it is also Free Software for the many people who simply choose to ignore such laws. However, ignoring laws is not really an option for Debian.) > Obviously Debian can make up its mind either way on this question, but > the point of view according to which trademark licences are not > required for a bunch of data to be DFSG-free seems more internally > consistent to me and more useful in practice. So personally I'd > recommend going with that direction. I think it is more useful, as well as practical, to go with a simliar policy as we have with patents: don't go actively searching out applicable {patents,trademarks}, and if someone actually starts enforcing a {patent,trademark} in a non-free manner against a work, consider the work non-free, at least in all jurisdictions where the {patent,trademark} applies. This does not apply, of course, to the one kind of requirement that DFSG4 allows: requiring that derived works carry a different name. - Josh Triplett
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