On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Michael K. Edwards wrote: > The trouble, I think, is that "derived product" has a legal meaning > (in the context of copyright) contrary to your common-sense > interpretation. Anything other than an exact copy of the source code > you distribute (or, if you distribute binaries, exact copies of them) > -- even an unpatched but independently compiled binary -- is a > "derived product" in this sense.
Which country is this in? I doubt that this works the same way all over the world. Any links to dutch or even european jurisprudence? > There's a legal instrument for control over other people's use of a > name -- it's called a trademark. It is governed by different law and > the criteria for infringement are different (e. g., "tarnishment" for > use of your product's name in a way that devalues the trademark, such > as by using it to refer to a shoddy derived product). For instance, > Linus Torvalds has registered "Linux" as a trademark precisely to deal > with this concern. The legal entities behind Apache and PHP have > probably also registered these trademarks and act as necessary to > defend them (necessary in order to retain ownership of the trademark > -- again different from copyright law). > > When you impose non-exact naming constraints in your license, I think > you are implicitly dragging in additional trademark considerations, > and that complicates the interpretation of the license as free or > non-free. I don't think anyone is hostile to your intention, but > there's a history of dispute over the details. And in any case, > adding that clause doesn't give you any legal recourse that you didn't > already have under the legal definition of a "confusingly similar" > trademark. (I think -- IANAL, and I'm going on US/California law.) There is no trademark for PHP for the simple reason that it is WAY too expensive to have a worldwide trademark. I can not afford to have a trademark. Because of that, I will keep my license clause as I do not want people to make a derivate called "Xdebug+" for example. Also, I do not care a single bit about whatever law some state in the US has, it's not of my concern. regards, Derick -- Xdebug | http://xdebug.org | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
