On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:46:31 -0400 Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Yeargh. I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention in February and didn't > see that Wiki page.
Better late than never! ;-) > > Look, we know what we want to do. > > (1) License the *copyright* freely as usual. > (2) Restrict the *trademark* with traditional trademark restrictions > only: it may not be used for deliberate "palming off", but may be > used in any other way. (So, crap like trademark "dilution" and > "defamation" we do want to give permission to do.) > > (3) Provide a model trademark license for upstreams to use. :-) Agreed, especially with (3)! [...] > I think we actually have a strong case for a new license. I've made > some proposals on the Wiki page ProposedTrademarkPolicy. Thinking > further, I would propose this, though I don't like it perfectly (it's > unclear thanks to being generic, unlike the ones on the Wiki page). > I really think we need a lawyer, but the trouble is we're charting > uncharted waters here, so they probably don't know any more than we > do. I think that you should insert this new proposal in the Wiki page, or at least a link to your debian-legal message[1]. [1] that is to say: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/04/msg00071.html > > Nathanael's Model Free Trademark License > ---------------------------------------- > The work [X] is a trademark, held by [Y], representing [Z]. > > The trademark holder hereby grants permission to any person to use the > trademark (and derivative marks) in any way except one: you may not > use it to falsely represent something else as being the thing > represented by the trademark. This permission should be interpreted > broadly: any use which is not clearly deceptive is permitted. > > The work is also subject to copyright, and is licensed under the > copyright license below, but that is not a trademark license and > should not be construed as one. > ------- I think this sounds really good. Maybe some minor wording enhancements could be applied in order to make it great, but I would not know exactly which. Hence, for the time being, I second your proposed trademark license. > > Potential usage examples follow. These are "paragraph one" > descriptions, with the other two paragraphs identical to the above. [snip examples...] The examples look great too. > Thoughts welcome. So far, the only thing that comes to my mind is the following. With your proposed plan, the Official Logo would become DFSG-free (right?), which is *great*, but means that it could be incorporated in packages included in Debian main. Since in some cases that could imply that Debian derivatives should purge at least some instances of the Official Logo (imagine Ubuntu or MEPIS or Knoppix shipping with a Debian Official Logo in their default GDM login splash screen... it would be inappropriate at best), I think that maybe we should prevent the Official Logo from appearing in main. How could this be done? Forbidding the inclusion of the Official Logo in main with a special Debian Policy rule? > Also, please feel free to forward this to anyone > who's doing something about the 'logo issues'. I think the current DPL (Anthony Towns) and the newly elected DPL (Sam Hocevar) should be pointed to this thread, as well as the SPI Board. -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/etch_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian etch installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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