On 13/03/17 14:06, Matthias Klumpp wrote: > Hello! > I ran into an interesting problem with the Terminix package[1]. > > Upstream was sent a trademark infringement letter from a lawyer of > Terminix, a pest control company, asking upstream to rename the > project, which they did now. > (See [2] for details) > Aside from the issue whether the trademark actually is valid for > software as well, I wonder whether we should rename the project in > Debian for the Stretch release like upstream did. > > If the claims are substantial, we might get a "don't use that name" > letter from the same company as well, since we'd be distributing > Terminix under it's old name, making this - kind of - an RC bug. > On the other hand, the software was released under the original name, > so maybe having it in Stretch under that name is fine? > > I never faced this issue before, has something like this happened > already in the past? > Any advice on whether and how this should be resolved would be highly > appreciated! > > If this trademark violation is equivalent to a RC bug, the only way it > could be solved would be switching to a new upstream release (patching > in a new name isn't really feasible, since the name is used pretty > much everywhere, from filenames to settings and strings in the code).
That's odd, but if upstream got renamed, I have no objections in following suit, assuming the diff is reasonable (i.e. reasonable changes other than the rename). Cheers, Emilio
