On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 05:44:08PM -0800, Michael K. Edwards wrote: > > So the question is: is the right to call a bit of software by a certain > > name an "important freedom"? That's definitely debatable. The name you > > use to refer to a bit of software doesn't affect its function. > > It can, especially in the case of a web browser; consider web servers > that verify that the client claims to be a sufficiently new Mozilla or > IE before sending DHTML.
What a client calls itself to servers (eg. in User-Agent headers) isn't an issue. That's a very functional use of the name, telling the server how to handle the client, not telling a user what program he's running. I don't think trademarks can touch that. Note that my copy of Explorer calls itself: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705) and every other browser I have installed either does the same or offers it as an alternative. (Anyone who knows more about trademarks than I do is encouraged to tell me I'm wrong, of course. IANAL.) -- Glenn Maynard
