Let's see if, once again, we can make a "a summary" thread an order of magnitude larger than the original thread. For more context (and comparison!) you can find the original thread at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 08:02:01PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > […] we need to discuss our general stance on trademarks and the impact > that trademark licenses (should) have on the content of the Debian > archive. Several important points have been raised in the discussion, let's start with: a) whether or not Debian practices could cause trademark infringement b) the role of trademark-like restrictions in the DFSG Regarding (a), I've sought and obtained legal advice. I've reported about it in [1]. If we trust such advice---and I see no reason not to---Debian practices could cause trademark infringements in various ways including: package names, user visible application names, icons, logos, etc. OTOH in most cases it seems safe to consider low level "implementation details", such as installation paths, to be outside the realm of what trademark law is meant to protect. On (b), we know that DFSG §4 "Integrity of The Author's Source Code" explicitly allows authors to require name or version change for distributing derived works. According to Bruce Perens [2], the underlying principle was to allow authors to manage and defend their marks, *as long as* there is a way out (e.g. a re-branded software version) that is free according to the other DFSG requirements. The letter of DFSG §4, unfortunately, only mentions software name and version. If we accept the proposed underlying principle, it would make sense to extend the interpretation of DFSG §4 to also cover the other elements typically protected by trademarks such as logos, icons, images, and visual designs. At the same time, even when we are *allowed* to keep something trademark encumbered in the archive without rebranding (either because we distribute it unchanged, or because the associated trademark policy is fine with the kind of changes we're interested), we might still have interest in rebranding. In particular, we should very carefully evaluate the risk of having to do the rebranding later on during the support time frame of a stable release (which is a painful thing to do), and decide what to do accordingly. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/02/msg00071.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/08/msg00069.html thanks to MJ Ray for pointing this out Proposal ======== Based on all the feedback received thus far and on the considerations above, here is an different (improved?) proposal on how to deal with trademark encumbered software in the Debian archive. - We agree that DFSG §4 allows licenses to request changes of name, version, as well as other distinguishing marks for distributing derived works (I.e. we accept the interpretation of the underlying principle of DFSG §4 proposed in [2]. Note that "license" above is used in general terms, because many of you correctly pointed out that DFSG care about freedoms rather than specific world-wide monopoly rights.) - At the same time, DFSG §4 does *not* allow licenses to request changes in implementation details that do not impact on author or software distinguishing marks, no matter what published trademark policies say. (Suggested by MJ Ray.) - Debian should neither seek nor accept trademark licenses that are specific to the Debian Project. (Suggested by Steve Langasek. In addition to Steve's reasoning, I think that doing otherwise would go against the underlying principle of DFSG §8 "License Must Not Be Specific to Debian".) - For trademark encumbered software that could at a given point in time be distributed without rebranding, maintainers should carefully evaluate the risk of having to rebrand them later on, and seek advice from the teams that would be impacted by impromptu rebranding (e.g.: security team, release team, ftp-masters). Discussion ========== Going through the above, I suspect that the first provision (extending DFSG §4) might be controversial. But the more I think of it, the more convinced I am that it'd be in the spirit of the current wording of DFSG §4, as hinted by the title of DFSG §4. In fact, renaming alone is already the most common case of trademark-like restriction and agreeing to extend it to visual marks wouldn't change anything in term of actual restrictions on our users. The second provision is what will guarantee we won't simply accept any exaggeration that authors might be willing to write down in trademark policies. We already have some general advice about what is acceptable and what is not; if the need arises, we can imagine asking for more software-specific legal advice before proceeding. Formally, while we could vote on all this, I still hope we can converge by discussion and consensus. If we do, we could for instance summarize all this in a position statement and publish it somewhere on the Debian website. I'll be eagerly waiting for your comments! Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o . Maître de conférences ...... http://upsilon.cc/zack ...... . . o Debian Project Leader ....... @zack on identi.ca ....... o o o « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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