Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:42:05 -0800, Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:44:00PM +0100, Claus Färber wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. That is by far the most bizarre trademark restriction I've ever heard of, and not at all in keeping with my understanding of US trademark law. For European trademark law, though, I would have to take your word for it. Why? If, for example, RUFhttp://www.ruf-automobile.de takes a Porsche, re-bores the engine, fits different turbos, changes the brakes and suspension, fits different cabin fittings c, how can they then reasonably say that the vehicle *is* a Porsche? The vehicle *was* a Porsche, and there still is a lot of Porsche components in that vehicle, but the totality of the vehicle now encompasses something far greater than a Porsche. Daniel.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 08:52:46AM +, Daniel Goldsmith wrote: On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:42:05 -0800, Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:44:00PM +0100, Claus Färber wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. That is by far the most bizarre trademark restriction I've ever heard of, and not at all in keeping with my understanding of US trademark law. For European trademark law, though, I would have to take your word for it. Why? If, for example, RUFhttp://www.ruf-automobile.de takes a Porsche, re-bores the engine, fits different turbos, changes the brakes and suspension, fits different cabin fittings c, how can they then reasonably say that the vehicle *is* a Porsche? The vehicle *was* a Porsche, and there still is a lot of Porsche components in that vehicle, but the totality of the vehicle now encompasses something far greater than a Porsche. You cannot claim the vehicle is a Porsche, because that would be false and infringe the trademark because Porsche sells cars. But US trademark law protects your right to say that you *used* a Porsche; it'd doesn't follow that leaving logos intact means you're claiming the vehicle is a Porsche. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claus_F=E4rber?=) wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. I can believe that they have to remove the trademarked symbol from the bonnet and boot, but I can't believe that they have to go grubbing around inside the engine and cabin obliterating the original trademarks. Is that right? At the moment, it seems that Mozilla's trademark licence asks us to do something like that, changing command names and other engine parts. From what has been explained here, I suspect MF is trying to assert more rights than it has. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:42:05 -0800, Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:44:00PM +0100, Claus Färber wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. That is by far the most bizarre trademark restriction I've ever heard of, and not at all in keeping with my understanding of US trademark law. For European trademark law, though, I would have to take your word for it. Why? If, for example, RUFhttp://www.ruf-automobile.de takes a Porsche, re-bores the engine, fits different turbos, changes the brakes and suspension, fits different cabin fittings c, how can they then reasonably say that the vehicle *is* a Porsche? The vehicle *was* a Porsche, and there still is a lot of Porsche components in that vehicle, but the totality of the vehicle now encompasses something far greater than a Porsche. Daniel.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 08:52:46AM +, Daniel Goldsmith wrote: On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 23:42:05 -0800, Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:44:00PM +0100, Claus Färber wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. That is by far the most bizarre trademark restriction I've ever heard of, and not at all in keeping with my understanding of US trademark law. For European trademark law, though, I would have to take your word for it. Why? If, for example, RUFhttp://www.ruf-automobile.de takes a Porsche, re-bores the engine, fits different turbos, changes the brakes and suspension, fits different cabin fittings c, how can they then reasonably say that the vehicle *is* a Porsche? The vehicle *was* a Porsche, and there still is a lot of Porsche components in that vehicle, but the totality of the vehicle now encompasses something far greater than a Porsche. You cannot claim the vehicle is a Porsche, because that would be false and infringe the trademark because Porsche sells cars. But US trademark law protects your right to say that you *used* a Porsche; it'd doesn't follow that leaving logos intact means you're claiming the vehicle is a Porsche. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claus_F=E4rber?=) wrote: I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. I can believe that they have to remove the trademarked symbol from the bonnet and boot, but I can't believe that they have to go grubbing around inside the engine and cabin obliterating the original trademarks. Is that right? At the moment, it seems that Mozilla's trademark licence asks us to do something like that, changing command names and other engine parts. From what has been explained here, I suspect MF is trying to assert more rights than it has.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Claus Färber) writes: Hallo, Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote: Gervase Markham has claimed[1] that command names must also be changed. That's well beyond DFSG#4, since it impacts compatibility. DFSG#4 was probably introduced to allow the distribution of LaTeX, whose license explicitly requires a change of the file name (in order to maintain compatibility, BTW). This is incorrect on more points than I can conveniently enumerate. To hit a few easy ones: * TeX does not require file name changes. It's just that there are trademarks on the symbols \TeX and TeX, and those licenses involve passing the gruelling TeX regression tests. * LaTeX doesn't require file name changes either; we had a big discussion with the LaTeX Project about this, and they were ultimately very nice about making and keeping the LPPL DFSG-free. * DFSG 4 doesn't permit licenses which require file name changes. It does permit licenses which require changes in the name of the work. The name of the work is strictly a social entity. A file name is functional. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Hallo, Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote: Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. Are you sure they are allowed? So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) I know of other precedents that say otherwise. E.g. automobile modders in Europe have to remove the original trademarks. Claus -- Connollystraße 8, D-80809 München, Tel. +49 700 CFAERBER, Fax +49 89 35709492 Mitterfeldstraße 20, D-83043 Bad Aibling - ICQ: 15468108 - www.faerber.muc.de OpenPGP: DSS 1024/639680F0 E7A8 AADB 6C8A 2450 67EA AF68 48A5 0E63 6396 80F0
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Hallo, Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote: Gervase Markham has claimed[1] that command names must also be changed. That's well beyond DFSG#4, since it impacts compatibility. DFSG#4 was probably introduced to allow the distribution of LaTeX, whose license explicitly requires a change of the file name (in order to maintain compatibility, BTW). Claus -- Connollystraße 8, D-80809 München, Tel. +49 700 CFAERBER, Fax +49 89 35709492 Mitterfeldstraße 20, D-83043 Bad Aibling - ICQ: 15468108 - www.faerber.muc.de OpenPGP: DSS 1024/639680F0 E7A8 AADB 6C8A 2450 67EA AF68 48A5 0E63 6396 80F0
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Claus Färber) writes: Hallo, Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote: Gervase Markham has claimed[1] that command names must also be changed. That's well beyond DFSG#4, since it impacts compatibility. DFSG#4 was probably introduced to allow the distribution of LaTeX, whose license explicitly requires a change of the file name (in order to maintain compatibility, BTW). This is incorrect on more points than I can conveniently enumerate. To hit a few easy ones: * TeX does not require file name changes. It's just that there are trademarks on the symbols \TeX and TeX, and those licenses involve passing the gruelling TeX regression tests. * LaTeX doesn't require file name changes either; we had a big discussion with the LaTeX Project about this, and they were ultimately very nice about making and keeping the LPPL DFSG-free. * DFSG 4 doesn't permit licenses which require file name changes. It does permit licenses which require changes in the name of the work. The name of the work is strictly a social entity. A file name is functional. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 03:12:58AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) Damn. I want a Mozilla shake ... -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) Well said. We just can't claim that RJR Nabisco (or whoever owns the Oreo mark these days) packaged them that way. Cheers, - Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray wrote: I can understand why I can't call it mozilla, because that's their name. They are not called firefox though. They make a thing called Mozilla Firefox and are claiming Firefox as an extra name. Er, that's what a trademark is :-) Nabisco isn't called Oreo, but Oreo is still their trademark. As you have just shown above, you are able to use Oreo without an agreement with them. I suspect we are able to use Firefox without your agreement, as long as use is honest like proper use of a name. MF may be seeking to establish an over-strict hold over their trademark by convincing Debian to make an unnecessary agreement. On a purely pragmatic note, if it's fine to require the name is changed for modified versions (like Debian's can be), it's not clear how to do that at present - do we know if it is even possible? Read back in the various threads on this topic - I've been explaining how it's done. Sorry, I thought you had only described how to make a build avoiding use of the trademarked logos, but there are some places where the name is hardwired? The trademarked name also appears in the supposedly non-trademark logo graphics, it seems. It feels like Mozilla may be free but vexatious. Unsurprisingly, I'm a little grumpy at them claiming they are behaving well while making more work for us. I apologise that our trademark policy makes more work for you, but I do think we are behaving well in that all of our software is still Free. I am not convinced that it's free if your trademark is used. Fortunately, the name is an avoidable problem. It's just a lot of work, so the wondering is necessary. Then there are the claims that X or Y from MF will discuss it, even though past attempts failed and it seems nothing has changed on MF's side. I'm here and I'm not going away. Will you keep tracking discussions even if others from MF are involved?
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is Debian's trademark policy freedom-restricting? [...] Yes. Why do you think it's under review? It's causing some minor silly situations when it interacts with copyrights of free software. I wasn't aware it was under review. The SPI Debian trademark committee was announced in October 2003. I am not sure of its current status. The logo problem last appeared in SPI board meeting minutes in October 2004. I believe Branden has asked for it to be discussed in February 2005. You wrote this, but you claimed that it stops the default search engine being changed away from my favourite invite spammers g**gl* - is this a contradiction? No, at least not by my understanding of what makes code free (i.e. that it's under a Free licence). How does your trademark licence restricting permitted modifications (essentially making part of your code invariant) qualify as a Free licence? Is it free only because we can change the name and discard the trademark licence?
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 10:46:02AM +, MJ Ray wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray wrote: I can understand why I can't call it mozilla, because that's their name. They are not called firefox though. They make a thing called Mozilla Firefox and are claiming Firefox as an extra name. Er, that's what a trademark is :-) Nabisco isn't called Oreo, but Oreo is still their trademark. As you have just shown above, you are able to use Oreo without an agreement with them. I suspect we are able to use Firefox without your agreement, as long as use is honest like proper use of a name. MF may be seeking to establish an over-strict hold over their trademark by convincing Debian to make an unnecessary agreement. Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 03:12:58AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) Damn. I want a Mozilla shake ... -- Glenn Maynard
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Indeed, I know of various ice cream shops that take Oreo cookies, crumble them to little bits, mix them in with other ingredients, and are allowed to sell them as Oreo shakes. So there seems to be precedent that trademark law allows us to do the same with Mozilla. ;) Well said. We just can't claim that RJR Nabisco (or whoever owns the Oreo mark these days) packaged them that way. Cheers, - Michael
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Nick Phillips wrote: After all, the same kind of thing is fine for TeX, LaTeX, Apache What are the exact restriction we have to follow when distributing apache? Where is this documented? Are those restrictions attached to the copyright file? Cheers, Alex -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It would seem to me that if you want to distribute a version of mozilla with a different default search, then it is reasonable to require that you do not call it mozilla or use any of their trademarks. I can understand why I can't call it mozilla, because that's their name. They are not called firefox though. They make a thing called Mozilla Firefox and are claiming Firefox as an extra name. It may be an acceptable extra restriction on the code which we can work with, like the GPL, but it's still a restriction most don't place. On a purely pragmatic note, if it's fine to require the name is changed for modified versions (like Debian's can be), it's not clear how to do that at present - do we know if it is even possible? It feels like Mozilla may be free but vexatious. Unsurprisingly, I'm a little grumpy at them claiming they are behaving well while making more work for us. Then there are the claims that X or Y from MF will discuss it, even though past attempts failed and it seems nothing has changed on MF's side. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think it's as simple as that. After all, Debian has a trademark policy, and restricts use of its trademarks, as does the Apache Group. Is Debian's trademark policy freedom-restricting? [...] Yes. Why do you think it's under review? It's causing some minor silly situations when it interacts with copyrights of free software. I wasn't aware it was under review. The Apache foundation have also rumbled about naming here, IIRC. I think you're nicer, so far. Thank you :-) I try. Because part of the Mozilla Foundation's strategy to raise enough money to employ people to work on the code involves leveraging the name. I think this is great - because it's not a model which restricts the freedom of the code. [...] You wrote this, but you claimed that it stops the default search engine being changed away from my favourite invite spammers g**gl* - is this a contradiction? No, at least not by my understanding of what makes code free (i.e. that it's under a Free licence). Gerv -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
It looks to me (IANAL) like, in US law, Debian has wide scope to alter a source code product in the course of packaging, and still use the upstream's trademarks, as long as it is labeled accordingly (and Debian is not contractually bound not to do so). See Prestonettes v. Coty 1924 ( http://laws.findlaw.com/us/264/359.html ), which was still good law at least as of Enesco v. Price/Costco 1998 ( http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9656571.html ). I am in sympathy with the Mozilla Foundation's wish to exercise quality control and to stay on the good side of contributors. I'd still like to see guidance for maintainers that says that bugs filed by the upstream don't get downrated. But in my view (IANADD either), attempts in contract language to interfere unreasonably with this liberty to use trademarks factually would violate the DFSG. Cheers, - Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I am in sympathy with the Mozilla Foundation's wish to exercise quality control and to stay on the good side of contributors. I'd still like to see guidance for maintainers that says that bugs filed by the upstream don't get downrated. But in my view (IANADD either), attempts in contract language to interfere unreasonably with this liberty to use trademarks factually would violate the DFSG. The DFSG has a specific permission for authors to require name changes. That's all Mozilla is doing here: requiring a change of name for their software. I would like to see the DFSG changed to remove that clause, but I doubt that will happen soon. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Nick Phillips wrote: After all, the same kind of thing is fine for TeX, LaTeX, Apache What are the exact restriction we have to follow when distributing apache? Where is this documented? Are those restrictions attached to the copyright file? Cheers, Alex -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It would seem to me that if you want to distribute a version of mozilla with a different default search, then it is reasonable to require that you do not call it mozilla or use any of their trademarks. I can understand why I can't call it mozilla, because that's their name. They are not called firefox though. They make a thing called Mozilla Firefox and are claiming Firefox as an extra name. It may be an acceptable extra restriction on the code which we can work with, like the GPL, but it's still a restriction most don't place. On a purely pragmatic note, if it's fine to require the name is changed for modified versions (like Debian's can be), it's not clear how to do that at present - do we know if it is even possible? It feels like Mozilla may be free but vexatious. Unsurprisingly, I'm a little grumpy at them claiming they are behaving well while making more work for us. Then there are the claims that X or Y from MF will discuss it, even though past attempts failed and it seems nothing has changed on MF's side.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray wrote: Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It would seem to me that if you want to distribute a version of mozilla with a different default search, then it is reasonable to require that you do not call it mozilla or use any of their trademarks. I can understand why I can't call it mozilla, because that's their name. They are not called firefox though. They make a thing called Mozilla Firefox and are claiming Firefox as an extra name. Er, that's what a trademark is :-) Nabisco isn't called Oreo, but Oreo is still their trademark. On a purely pragmatic note, if it's fine to require the name is changed for modified versions (like Debian's can be), it's not clear how to do that at present - do we know if it is even possible? Read back in the various threads on this topic - I've been explaining how it's done. It feels like Mozilla may be free but vexatious. Unsurprisingly, I'm a little grumpy at them claiming they are behaving well while making more work for us. I apologise that our trademark policy makes more work for you, but I do think we are behaving well in that all of our software is still Free. Then there are the claims that X or Y from MF will discuss it, even though past attempts failed and it seems nothing has changed on MF's side. I'm here and I'm not going away. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think it's as simple as that. After all, Debian has a trademark policy, and restricts use of its trademarks, as does the Apache Group. Is Debian's trademark policy freedom-restricting? [...] Yes. Why do you think it's under review? It's causing some minor silly situations when it interacts with copyrights of free software. I wasn't aware it was under review. The Apache foundation have also rumbled about naming here, IIRC. I think you're nicer, so far. Thank you :-) I try. Because part of the Mozilla Foundation's strategy to raise enough money to employ people to work on the code involves leveraging the name. I think this is great - because it's not a model which restricts the freedom of the code. [...] You wrote this, but you claimed that it stops the default search engine being changed away from my favourite invite spammers g**gl* - is this a contradiction? No, at least not by my understanding of what makes code free (i.e. that it's under a Free licence). Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
It looks to me (IANAL) like, in US law, Debian has wide scope to alter a source code product in the course of packaging, and still use the upstream's trademarks, as long as it is labeled accordingly (and Debian is not contractually bound not to do so). See Prestonettes v. Coty 1924 ( http://laws.findlaw.com/us/264/359.html ), which was still good law at least as of Enesco v. Price/Costco 1998 ( http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9656571.html ). I am in sympathy with the Mozilla Foundation's wish to exercise quality control and to stay on the good side of contributors. I'd still like to see guidance for maintainers that says that bugs filed by the upstream don't get downrated. But in my view (IANADD either), attempts in contract language to interfere unreasonably with this liberty to use trademarks factually would violate the DFSG. Cheers, - Michael
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I am in sympathy with the Mozilla Foundation's wish to exercise quality control and to stay on the good side of contributors. I'd still like to see guidance for maintainers that says that bugs filed by the upstream don't get downrated. But in my view (IANADD either), attempts in contract language to interfere unreasonably with this liberty to use trademarks factually would violate the DFSG. The DFSG has a specific permission for authors to require name changes. That's all Mozilla is doing here: requiring a change of name for their software. I would like to see the DFSG changed to remove that clause, but I doubt that will happen soon. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 08:26:50PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: The DFSG has a specific permission for authors to require name changes. That's all Mozilla is doing here: requiring a change of name for their software. Gervase Markham has claimed[1] that command names must also be changed. That's well beyond DFSG#4, since it impacts compatibility. (It's also beyond trademark law entirely, to my understanding. I pointed that out, but got no response.) [1] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Glenn Maynard
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
It looks to me (IANAL) like, in US law, Debian has wide scope to alter a source code product in the course of packaging, and still use the upstream's trademarks, as long as it is labeled accordingly (and Debian is not contractually bound not to do so). See Prestonettes v. Coty 1924 ( http://laws.findlaw.com/us/264/359.html ), which was still good law at least as of Enesco v. Price/Costco 1998 ( http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9656571.html ). In case I wasn't clear, this interpretation suggests (IANAL) that no trademark license is required (in the US) to distribute under the name Mozilla Firefox in Debian Packaging or the like. Arguably, given that _everything_ in Debian is built from (potentially heavily patched) source by the Debian maintainer (or her upload sponsor or the autobuilders), mozilla-firefox_1.0+dfsg.1-2_i386.deb is enough. But putting Debian conspicuously in the short description and as packaged by the Debian Project in the long description should be ample. (This statement should be reviewed carefully by someone who understands the Coty standard better than I do; other things may be needed to meet its criterion of non-confusion in a software context.) If this suffices, the Mozilla Foundation is probably better off this way, since they aren't granting a trademark license and then leaving QA up to the licensee (which is the sort of thing that compromises one's trademark), nor are they forgoing any right to sue in the event of actual harm. I retract my earlier comment about how it's responsible of the Mozilla Folks to put trademark language in the MPL (which was a factual error anyway). It's responsible for them to discuss it with packagers. But sometimes it's better to leave things out of the contract when the statutory remedies and case law interpretations are satisfactory to both parties. Can anyone point to comparable precedents elsewhere? Cheers, - Michael
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 01:13:35AM +, MJ Ray wrote: Because part of the Mozilla Foundation's strategy to raise enough money to employ people to work on the code involves leveraging the name. I think this is great - because it's not a model which restricts the freedom of the code. [...] You wrote this, but you claimed that it stops the default search engine being changed away from my favourite invite spammers g**gl* - is this a contradiction? It would seem to me that if you want to distribute a version of mozilla with a different default search, then it is reasonable to require that you do not call it mozilla or use any of their trademarks. After all, the same kind of thing is fine for TeX, LaTeX, Apache Cheers, Nick
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Don Armstrong wrote: I know if I were maintaining it, I would be very worried that the trademark license would be pulled or similar, and I would be in the very wierd position of trying to pull the packages from a stable release and dealing with all of the problems that that would cause for the users of the packages. I don't think we'd have a problem with a system whereby once a stable release was done, we couldn't withdraw permission for that release (given Debian's existing policy of just doing security updates to stable releases). Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Alexander Sack wrote: In contrast, the package you want us to distribute is not distributed by upstream. You distribute something that is restricted by active trademark enforcement, which IMHO is non-free, because a trademark policy is just another way to restrict freedom. I don't think it's as simple as that. After all, Debian has a trademark policy, and restricts use of its trademarks, as does the Apache Group. Is Debian's trademark policy freedom-restricting? I don't think so - it just makes sure consumers know what they are getting. You referred often to 'we'd have to negotiate'. OK, fine. Let's start with it. Maybe you give up on some off your procedures. e.g. you could give up restrictions you try to enforce on us. I mean, debian (as well as other free software distributors) is (are) should not need to care if there is a trademark for some package or something. There is no problem for thousands of packages we include, so why mozilla? Because part of the Mozilla Foundation's strategy to raise enough money to employ people to work on the code involves leveraging the name. I think this is great - because it's not a model which restricts the freedom of the code. It also gives us an incentive to make high-quality releases, because if we don't, the goodwill associated with the name goes down the pan. AFAIK, enforcement of trademarks can be of preventive or responsive nature. I think if you treat your trademarks like others do (in a responsive manner), there would be no problem either. (This might be wrong, though, because me != lawyer) As I may have mentioned before, some sort of responsive scheme may well be OK - but that doesn't get to the heart of what I understand the problem to be, which is the onward transmission of rights. I bet they would go after commercials or other organizations that actually want to harm the brand significantly. ...and their ability to do so may well have been harmed by a lack of trademark enforcement in the past. What I am trying to say is that mozilla is far too eager in enforcing their trademarks. I hope this is because you just think this is needed by law. I hope this is not because you really believe it helps the overall purpose or will maximize the value of your brand. We believe it helps the overall purpose in that it helps fund people to work on the code. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Sat, 08 Jan 2005, Gervase Markham wrote: Don Armstrong wrote: I know if I were maintaining it, I would be very worried that the trademark license would be pulled or similar, and I would be in the very wierd position of trying to pull the packages from a stable release and dealing with all of the problems that that would cause for the users of the packages. I don't think we'd have a problem with a system whereby once a stable release was done, we couldn't withdraw permission for that release (given Debian's existing policy of just doing security updates to stable releases). I didn't mean to sound like the Mozilla Foundation would willfully do something that nefarious. However, unlike the common Free Software licenses, the trademark licenses proposed by MF are revocable at any time. For example, if MF's counsel decided that the trademark agreements weren't set up correctly to preserve the mark, something else caused Mozilla to need to revisit the terms of the trademark agreements, or Mozilla Foundation got tired of hearing about issues affecting ancient mozilla versions, and wanted to pull the mark because it no longer lived up to the quality standards of a current mozilla release. Without an irrevocable trademark license, I at least, would be very cautious about using the marks in the Debian package, given that Mozilla appears to be interested in prosecuting non-Mozilla use of the marks. Don Armstrong -- Identical parts aren't. -- Beach's Law http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 12:43:48 + Gervase Markham wrote: Alexander Sack wrote: [...] What I am trying to say is that mozilla is far too eager in enforcing their trademarks. I hope this is because you just think this is needed by law. I hope this is not because you really believe it helps the overall purpose or will maximize the value of your brand. We believe it helps the overall purpose in that it helps fund people to work on the code. I'm no expert in fund-raising strategies: could you please explain what you mean? How can MoFo raise funds by preventing other people from calling Mozilla Firefox a distributed modified version of its XUL-based web browser? -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpxY2VtrQPOa.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Francesco Poli wrote: I'm no expert in fund-raising strategies: could you please explain what you mean? How can MoFo raise funds by preventing other people from calling Mozilla Firefox a distributed modified version of its XUL-based web browser? One example is that we have a deal with Google such that they are the default search and on the default home page in Mozilla Firefox. I suspect (and I wasn't involved in negotiating it, so can freely speculate) that we would probably not have got that deal if we couldn't guarantee that all the builds we distribute and publicise would have Google as the default search. Google are happy to pay to ride the wave of publicity we've managed to generate for Firefox. But they'd be less happy to pay if we couldn't guarantee product quality, or we couldn't guarantee their placement. We do both using the trademarks. (Note: I'm not certain of the exact terms, so I don't know whether the deal is linked to all Mozilla Firefox builds or all Firefox builds. I know the Community Edition terms for using Firefox don't let you change the default search engine.) Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By the way, the trademark FAQ doesn't tell me how to build without including the proprietary logos. Can anyone tell me how? Spotted another thread (mail is slow here this week) and replaced the branding dir. Rebuild underway. Still need to replace titlebar? I apologise that we don't have a better document detailing this process. - The default build for Firefox and Thunderbird uses non-trademarked logos - The names can be found in files called brand.dtd and brand.properties http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/find?string=browser.*brand (for Firefox) This should change the vast majority of instances. There are a few it doesn't; these are either bugs or unavoidable due to the words being in other pieces of code, like the installer. But try that and see how far you get. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On 06 Jan 2005 01:30:02 GMT MJ Ray wrote: Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it? Alternatively, if the names are changed to firebird/tbird/mozzarella or anything else avoiding the MF trademarks, no extra licences are required. Describing the heritage in the description line will let users find the right debian package, while still being honest. If MF is really going to insist that it gets magic veto rights over the work of the debian maintainer and users, changing the name is the easiest solution. If MF want us to use the trademarks, make that solution easier by relaxing the policy enough to follow the DFSG. I think it's fine to insist on prominent marking of differences, but it's too severe to revoke permission based on random unspecified quality judgements. I agree entirely. At present, it seems we really *need* to replace MoFo trademarked names and logos in order to satisfy the DFSG. Sad but true. :-( -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpxMfuWYJ3nJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005, Francesco Poli wrote: On 06 Jan 2005 01:30:02 GMT MJ Ray wrote: Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it? At present, it seems we really *need* to replace MoFo trademarked names and logos in order to satisfy the DFSG. Sad but true. :-( And even if one were to ignore the DFSG, I'd be surprised if the maintainers were willing to agree to the type of restrictions necessary to even use them. I know if I were maintaining it, I would be very worried that the trademark license would be pulled or similar, and I would be in the very wierd position of trying to pull the packages from a stable release and dealing with all of the problems that that would cause for the users of the packages. Don Armstrong -- Quite the contrary; they *love* collateral damage. If they can make you miserable enough, maybe you'll stop using email entirely. Once enough people do that, then there'll be no legitimate reason left for anyone to run an SMTP server, and the spam problem will be solved. Craig Dickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it? I don't see why. We don't require that trademark licenses be granted to our users in any case - us having an extra permission above and beyond the freedoms we expect for our users doesn't seem to be a problem. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - The default build for Firefox and Thunderbird uses non-trademarked logos Are you sure? The graphics seem to have the words Firefox in them, which doesn't seem a permitted use of the trademark to me. - The names can be found in files called brand.dtd and brand.properties http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/find?string=browser.*brand (for Firefox) Ah, I found another directory mozilla/dist/branding as well as the mozilla/other-licenses/branding one that I knew about. Which of these are actually used? Still the About box and about: page have Firefox graphics. Grrr. Where do they come from? This should change the vast majority of instances. There are a few it doesn't; these are either bugs or unavoidable due to the words being in other pieces of code, like the installer. But try that and see how far you get. Well, the titlebar and some of the names are now correct. I still have a browser that uses the Firefox trademark repeatedly to describe itself. Can I distribute it? Is MF implicitly licensing the trademarks by making it so hard to remove them when performing acts permitted by the copyright licence? Actually, I have no idea whether implicit trademark licences exist. I was only told about implicit patent licences last year. I'd rather not rely on that idea if I don't have to ;-) Amusingly, the About FireWWW box says it is copyright contributors, but pressing the credits button displays a box empty apart from FireWWW \n The browser, reloaded. How do Mozilla contributors feel about not being credited on the About box at all? -- MJR/slef
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it? I don't see why. We don't require that trademark licenses be granted to our users in any case - us having an extra permission above and beyond the freedoms we expect for our users doesn't seem to be a problem. We're distributing some files which cannot be modified and distributed if MF considers the resulting work confusingly similar. Are there many other packages afflicted by such agressive registered trademarks? The other one which I remember is Apache and I think their trademark was another source of tension once. I would agree with your view if one doesn't need an MF trademark license to modify and distribute any of the work from debian main. Is this similar to deciding whether we would delete invariant sections from GNU FDL'd works if it were possible and they were the only problem? -- MJR/slef
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't see why. We don't require that trademark licenses be granted to our users in any case - us having an extra permission above and beyond the freedoms we expect for our users doesn't seem to be a problem. We're distributing some files which cannot be modified and distributed if MF considers the resulting work confusingly similar. Are there many other packages afflicted by such agressive registered trademarks? The other one which I remember is Apache and I think their trademark was another source of tension once. But we're also distributing files that the user can't modify without renaming, so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is. If Mozilla's /copyright/ license said You may not modify this without renaming it, unless you have a separate agreement with us, would you object to Debian having permission to call the code Mozilla? Would you object if we then distributed it under that name, even if our users didn't have permission to do so? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - The default build for Firefox and Thunderbird uses non-trademarked logos Are you sure? The graphics seem to have the words Firefox in them, which doesn't seem a permitted use of the trademark to me. The default build removes the trademarked logos (the fox-on-globe or the bird-on-envelope) but not the trademarked words. This is because our current trademark policies are more strict about the use of the logo compared to the word, so more people (e.g. all our localisers) use the word. Of course, there's a big under construction sign on all this, so I wouldn't be surprised if reality differs a little from the ideal. - The names can be found in files called brand.dtd and brand.properties http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/find?string=browser.*brand (for Firefox) Ah, I found another directory mozilla/dist/branding as well as the mozilla/other-licenses/branding one that I knew about. Which of these are actually used? mozilla/dist is the built version of Mozilla. mozilla/other-licenses/branding shouldn't be pulled or built unless you've set MOZ_USE_OFFICIAL_BRANDING: http://lxr.mozilla.org/aviarybranch/source/Makefile.in#208 This is done using the --enable-official-branding switch to configure. If a clean CVS pull without that switch is pulling and building in that directory, that's definitely a bug. :-) Is MF implicitly licensing the trademarks by making it so hard to remove them when performing acts permitted by the copyright licence? No. :-) Amusingly, the About FireWWW box says it is copyright contributors, but pressing the credits button displays a box empty apart from FireWWW \n The browser, reloaded. How do Mozilla contributors feel about not being credited on the About box at all? If you wait, it scrolls - or it should do. There are also more contributors at about:credits. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But we're also distributing files that the user can't modify without renaming, so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is. If Mozilla's /copyright/ license said You may not modify this without renaming it, unless you have a separate agreement with us, would you object to Debian having permission to call the code Mozilla? Would you object if we then distributed it under that name, even if our users didn't have permission to do so? Probably not. Is freedom to modify (or not) the software's name as essential as the freedom to modify (or not) the software itself? The problem here isn't a forced filename change or even a forced change: it's some restriction on edits allowed by a licence.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray wrote: Are you sure? The graphics seem to have the words Firefox in them, which doesn't seem a permitted use of the trademark to me. The default build removes the trademarked logos (the fox-on-globe or the bird-on-envelope) but not the trademarked words. Just to be clear: are you saying that the logo graphic with a blue world (no fox) and the word Firefox is OK to use for any purpose? mozilla/dist is the built version of Mozilla. mozilla/other-licenses/branding shouldn't be pulled or built unless you've set MOZ_USE_OFFICIAL_BRANDING: [...] mozilla/other-licenses/branding is in the source tarball. I've no compelling reason to track mozilla CVS, as far as I know. If mozilla/dist/.../branding is the built version, where is it built from? Amusingly, the About FireWWW box says it is copyright contributors, but pressing the credits button displays a box empty apart from FireWWW \n The browser, reloaded. [...] If you wait, it scrolls - or it should do. There are also more contributors at about:credits. Oh yes, so it does. The mozilla compile must have been slowing that machine down a bit...
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Matthew Garrett wrote: Right. Material that doesn't provide all the DFSG-required freedoms on to recipients other than Debian isn't free. But I don't think DFSG 8 is intended to prevent Debian (or some other class of people) from having /extra/ freedoms, as long as everyone else has at least an acceptable base level. I agree, but I also think that in cases where attaining those freedoms requires those downstream from Debian to go to a great deal of effort, Debian should go ahead and make that effort rather than leaving it to others. (However, it sounds like Mozilla may not be one of those cases.) - Josh Triplett signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
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. That's a bit different - no one's arguing that the MoFo should have any control over the UserAgent string of any browser, even one Debian ships, just because it contains the word Mozilla. Such an effort would be both counter-productive and laughable. Exactly what the app is called is a more difficult question. There's a long tradition of ln -s /usr/bin/exim sendmail, but you could also argue that if someone downloads and installs Debian or a derivative and types firefox, the trademark holder should be making sure they get a Firefox they have checked for quality in a trademark sense. It looks to me like there's a real storm brewing over trademark enforcement in open source space. At least in most US jurisdictions, trademark law applies an enforce it or lose it standard, and one of the key criteria in judging whether a company takes its trademark seriously is whether it exercises quality assurance over third parties to which it has (explicitly or implicitly) licensed the right to distribute goods or services marked with its trademark. I think it's absolutely right to raise the wider issue. In a hypothetical situation where Debian is the dominant distribution channel for Software X, performs QA functions, and handles the bulk of bug reports, the upstream for Software X could actually lose ownership of the trademark to Debian. Even when the distributor relationship is non-exclusive, a failure to exercise QA authority over the Debian channel could weaken Mozilla's ability to enforce the trademark on other channels. (Imagine Mozilla Firefox, MS Authorized Edition with the crippling limitations of your choice.) Or even just Mozilla Firefox distributed in an official-looking manner rom www.firefoxbrowser.info with added spyware or bank login capture. So the Mozilla folks are being responsible in setting out the limits of the license to use their trademarks as part of the MPL, rather than leaving the issue unaddressed and then springing it on people in court. We're not actually doing it as part of the MPL - we want to keep trademark licensing separate from code licensing. The MPL doesn't speak about trademarks except to say that it itself doesn't give you any rights to them. I think it would be a good idea to work out a modus vivendi with them, such that the names of Debian-packaged Mozilla products are unchanged, and designated persons from Mozilla have the right to file RC bugs that the maintainer isn't allowed to downgrade. That at least preserves the forms of trademark defense, at a rather minimal cost in freedom. One principle that we were originally working with in our trademark policy is QA in retrospect - i.e. we let you do roughly what you want, but if the packages are of a consistent low standard, we get to pull the trademark and you have to change the name. Now at the beginning of the thread, there were some objections raised to this idea - but is it better than more intrusive forms of trademark control? GErv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Brian Masinick wrote: mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. I think plenty of dialog with Mozilla is a good idea. If they don't like the way we package Thunderbird or any of the other packages, I should point out again that (given the discussions I've had with the Thunderbird maintainer) we are almost certainly going to be happy with what Debian itself does. Debian Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox Debian Email client based on Mozilla Thunderbird Debian browser suite based on Mozilla As someone raised earlier, isn't this just replacing one trademark problem with another (Debian)? Those also aren't particularly wieldy names for a title bar or package ;-) I have a hard time believing that after all this time they want people to get away from their names, but if that's really what they want, let's do it. No, we don't want people to get away from the names. But we do want a way of ensuring that they are a mark of quality in trademark terms. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 00:06:12 + Matthew Garrett wrote: Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian only, and not to downstream recipients as well. There's some contention over this. Based on the discussion on debian-private that led to the DFSG, I think 8 was effectively shorthand for ensuring that every freedom enumerated in the DFSG was available to any further recipients. Others disagree. I asked Bruce about this, but never got a reply. Personally, I have no objection to Debian being given freedoms that other users don't, providing that everyone obtains rights that satisfy the DFSG. Yes, that's what I meant: my important freedoms referred to the ones enumerated in the other DFSG... If someone gets one additional freedom, that's fine, as long as nobody lacks the minimum set of freedoms necessary to call something Free. Example: This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation. [an so on...] As a special exception, the Debian project (and its mirror network) is permitted to copy and distribute the Program in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1, without complying with clauses a, b or c of Section 3. This would be perfectly fine, I think: everyone has enough freedoms (the ones specified by the DFSG); someone simply has an additional one. -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpKRbPu65Qie.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, I don't want to get too far into this conversation until we've established whether you will need new names. Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it? Alternatively, if the names are changed to firebird/tbird/mozzarella or anything else avoiding the MF trademarks, no extra licences are required. Describing the heritage in the description line will let users find the right debian package, while still being honest. If MF is really going to insist that it gets magic veto rights over the work of the debian maintainer and users, changing the name is the easiest solution. If MF want us to use the trademarks, make that solution easier by relaxing the policy enough to follow the DFSG. I think it's fine to insist on prominent marking of differences, but it's too severe to revoke permission based on random unspecified quality judgements. Ideally, I want to get a good understanding of the Debian position on trademarks in general, and then go to Chris Beard and Mitchell Baker (with whom the trademark buck stops) and see what they say. After they've agreed that nothing can be done, if that's their view, then let's talk about alternative names. IIRC, both branden and myself tried to discuss trademarks with you and others from MF before. In my discussion, MF people just stopped answering emails. What new steps will MF take to reach consensus this time? Basically, can debian contributors expect any progress? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and maybe not of groups I know
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We're happy to say that Debian doesn't tend to ship software that sucks - but you want the freedom to do so, and let others do so. And I understand that. :-) Do you? We want the freedom to ship software that MF *thinks* sucks but we don't. After all, one day MF might think it's sucky to have a browser that doesn't let web sites write arbitrary data to $HOME... browsers have done stranger...
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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. [...] Is the right to modify the included mozilla logo to signify that it's a modified version an important freedom? By the way, the trademark FAQ doesn't tell me how to build without including the proprietary logos. Can anyone tell me how?
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By the way, the trademark FAQ doesn't tell me how to build without including the proprietary logos. Can anyone tell me how? Spotted another thread (mail is slow here this week) and replaced the branding dir. Rebuild underway. Still need to replace titlebar?
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 11:56:24PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We're happy to say that Debian doesn't tend to ship software that sucks - but you want the freedom to do so, and let others do so. And I understand that. :-) Here's an idea: a source package that builds either Thunderbird for Debian or Lightningferret, a trademark-free version -- and defaults to the latter, except on Debian autobuilders. The real source to build the Thunderbird for Debian version is there, and it's a trivial switch. But the work of producing a free-to-suck version is already done. For reasons I can't fully articulate, I don't think that's a good idea: source packages should be the plain and simple source of the binaries produced. But I'm curious whether it would be accepted as Free by debian-legal. What the package actually does is orthogonal to what rights are available, other than the former being bounded by the latter (at least we hope it is). If those rights are not available - under the same terms - to our downstreams (be they users, custom distros... whatever), then by the spirit of DFSG #8 (at least IMO), we shouldn't be able to make use of them either. Beyond that, alternate package building paths for reasons other than purely technical (debug libraries and the like) are just a Bad Idea. If it isn't of use to build a Debian package - or to let anyone else build the exact same package and distribute it just as we do - then, as a rule, it shouldn't be in the package; it's cruft. -- Joel Aelwyn [EMAIL PROTECTED] ,''`. : :' : `. `' `- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:28:43 -0700 Joel Aelwyn wrote: If those rights are not available - under the same terms - to our downstreams (be they users, custom distros... whatever), then by the spirit of DFSG #8 (at least IMO), we shouldn't be able to make use of them either. Exactly. DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian only, and not to downstream recipients as well. -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpwdgBHyUe20.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Francesco Poli wrote: Exactly. DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian only, and not to downstream recipients as well. 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. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian only, and not to downstream recipients as well. There's some contention over this. Based on the discussion on debian-private that led to the DFSG, I think 8 was effectively shorthand for ensuring that every freedom enumerated in the DFSG was available to any further recipients. Others disagree. I asked Bruce about this, but never got a reply. Personally, I have no objection to Debian being given freedoms that other users don't, providing that everyone obtains rights that satisfy the DFSG. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 12:06:12AM +, Matthew Garrett wrote: Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian only, and not to downstream recipients as well. There's some contention over this. Based on the discussion on debian-private that led to the DFSG, I think 8 was effectively shorthand for ensuring that every freedom enumerated in the DFSG was available to any further recipients. Others disagree. I asked Bruce about this, but never got a reply. Just to be clear: except for the clear part, you're agreeing with Francesco, right? -- Glenn Maynard
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham 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. Yes, that's right, but we don't want to be upstream or another fork. We package free software provided by upstream. That is, we usually distribute the tarballs as they are and build the package with modifications we need to do in order to keep up with some debian standards or to improve the quality. In contrast, the package you want us to distribute is not distributed by upstream. You distribute something that is restricted by active trademark enforcement, which IMHO is non-free, because a trademark policy is just another way to restrict freedom. You referred often to 'we'd have to negotiate'. OK, fine. Let's start with it. Maybe you give up on some off your procedures. e.g. you could give up restrictions you try to enforce on us. I mean, debian (as well as other free software distributors) is (are) should not need to care if there is a trademark for some package or something. There is no problem for thousands of packages we include, so why mozilla? The whole issue arises with your policy document. If no such thing would exist, we (including mozilla) would probably have no problem here. Nevertheless, you could still claim your brand your own IMHO. It is just a problem on how you define actively enforcing a trademark. AFAIK, enforcement of trademarks can be of preventive or responsive nature. I think if you treat your trademarks like others do (in a responsive manner), there would be no problem either. (This might be wrong, though, because me != lawyer) AFAICS, other projects use a responsive enforcement for their trademark. I assume this, because they did not come to us. I bet they would go after commercials or other organizations that actually want to harm the brand significantly. On the other hand, going behind the small guys that distribute their super gcc cvs HEAD build of a package is somehow different. Usually those guys are somewhat private and they actually have no intent nor the potential to harm your trademark. Maybe they get 100 downloads of this super unstable package, but that's it. If the quality sucks, people won't come back, but will typically not think: This piece of software is firefox? What a bad brand!. IHMO, people installing those builds will more or less know what they are doing. Actually, I think there is a much greater probability, that some stupid guy somehow gets your pretty broken HEAD-prealpha-fancy-testings-stuff still-branded-premium-build on his box and wonders why the UI is somehow broken. After installing the right version, he finds his profile is broken and as a stupid user his pop mail inbox is lost too. I bet, the user will find this is _no inbox reclaim_, but rather _an inbox wipe-out_ :). What I am trying to say is that mozilla is far too eager in enforcing their trademarks. I hope this is because you just think this is needed by law. I hope this is not because you really believe it helps the overall purpose or will maximize the value of your brand. Finally, I cannot tell you what to do. But I think it is your turn to break this vicious circle. As Glenn just pointed out, this is completely uncommon. So why do you want to go this way anyway? Try to rethink your attitude, maybe escalate this issue to mozilla management or do what is needed to do, to actually keep things going. I doubt there is a solution unless you do so. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. I think plenty of dialog with Mozilla is a good idea. If they don't like the way we package Thunderbird or any of the other packages, I recommend using really generic names for each of the packages, then refer to the Mozilla names in the descriptions, such as: Debian Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox Debian Email client based on Mozilla Thunderbird Debian browser suite based on Mozilla or something similar that makes them happy and still makes things like package searches contain a searchable string that people can recognize. I have a hard time believing that after all this time they want people to get away from their names, but if that's really what they want, let's do it. But let's not make up any new funky names. That just opens up the possibility of other issues elsewhere. If we must change the name at all, let's associate it with our project and a generic term describing the application. Can that get us into any trouble? Hopefully not. -- Brian Masinick mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Henning Makholm wrote: But isn't the full suite going to be discontinued once the thermodynamically challenged predator and its stormy avian cousin reach maturity anyway? As I understand it, not anymore: there are enough third parties building upon Seamonkey (the suite) that it will continue to be maintained for the forseeable future. - Josh Triplett signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Josh Triplett wrote: Henning Makholm wrote: But isn't the full suite going to be discontinued once the thermodynamically challenged predator and its stormy avian cousin reach maturity anyway? As I understand it, not anymore: there are enough third parties building upon Seamonkey (the suite) that it will continue to be maintained for the forseeable future. That's the current position. Whether we just keep it working or whether it moves along more innovatively depends on whether anyone ports it to the new UI toolkit that Firefox and Thunderbird use. There is an effort under way to do that, but I don't know if it'll succeed. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 17:24:35 + Gervase Markham wrote: Francesco Poli wrote: tbird - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird ffox - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox sbird - ... derived from Mozilla Sunbird moz - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla For what it's worth (and without making any judgement on the legal weight such a view would have, or how far we'd go in trying to enforce such a view) we'd be very unhappy with Moz (a very common abbreviation for Mozilla, and used already by the project in various ways) and TBird (being a very common abbreviation for Thunderbird), and not particularly keen on ffox either. If these names are unacceptable, I begin to be concerned that users won't be able to find the right packages or type the right shell commands, without having to remember weird mutant names from outer space... :-( Don't you feel that many users will use that really cool StormyFlyingAnimal MUA without even knowing it actually is Mozilla Thunderbird with some distro-specific adaptations? Mozilla Thunderbird could be a brand of quality, but who will acknowledge this, when nobody knows he/she is actually using that program? Don't you think that all this defending precious trademarks could result in being counter-productive? -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpvGH0rw7ztJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Francesco Poli wrote: If these names are unacceptable, I begin to be concerned that users won't be able to find the right packages or type the right shell commands, without having to remember weird mutant names from outer space... :-( Don't you feel that many users will use that really cool StormyFlyingAnimal MUA without even knowing it actually is Mozilla Thunderbird with some distro-specific adaptations? Mozilla Thunderbird could be a brand of quality, but who will acknowledge this, when nobody knows he/she is actually using that program? This is the entire point, isn't it? :-) We want people to use Thunderbird in Debian, and to know they are using Thunderbird, and to get the high quality experience people get from using our Thunderbird. And we want to come to some arrangement with Debian to make that possible. However, you guys want the freedom to ship software that sucks - or, more to the point and more likely, want to be able to easily give your software to other people and allow them to make it suck and then ship it. If that software ships using our trademarks, then that is incompatible with our trademark goals. So if we can't come to some arrangement that lets Debian use them but asks redistributors to contact us or remove them, then it's increasingly looking like we can't square this circle :-( We're happy to say that Debian doesn't tend to ship software that sucks - but you want the freedom to do so, and let others do so. And I understand that. :-) Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We're happy to say that Debian doesn't tend to ship software that sucks - but you want the freedom to do so, and let others do so. And I understand that. :-) Here's an idea: a source package that builds either Thunderbird for Debian or Lightningferret, a trademark-free version -- and defaults to the latter, except on Debian autobuilders. The real source to build the Thunderbird for Debian version is there, and it's a trivial switch. But the work of producing a free-to-suck version is already done. For reasons I can't fully articulate, I don't think that's a good idea: source packages should be the plain and simple source of the binaries produced. But I'm curious whether it would be accepted as Free by debian-legal. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 22:20:26 -0500 Nathanael Nerode wrote: As long as we're discussing names [...] A name for the suite is hard. What about the following ones? tbird - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird ffox - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox sbird - ... derived from Mozilla Sunbird moz - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla Note: the name tbird was thought by Alexander Sack, credit where credit is due! :) -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpEvShJ5C72L.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 10:20:26PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: A name for the suite is hard. Mozzarella. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Francesco Poli wrote: tbird - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird ffox - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox sbird - ... derived from Mozilla Sunbird moz - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla For what it's worth (and without making any judgement on the legal weight such a view would have, or how far we'd go in trying to enforce such a view) we'd be very unhappy with Moz (a very common abbreviation for Mozilla, and used already by the project in various ways) and TBird (being a very common abbreviation for Thunderbird), and not particularly keen on ffox either. However, I don't want to get too far into this conversation until we've established whether you will need new names. Ideally, I want to get a good understanding of the Debian position on trademarks in general, and then go to Chris Beard and Mitchell Baker (with whom the trademark buck stops) and see what they say. After they've agreed that nothing can be done, if that's their view, then let's talk about alternative names. Gerv
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, I don't want to get too far into this conversation until we've established whether you will need new names. Ideally, I want to get a good understanding of the Debian position on trademarks in general, and then go to Chris Beard and Mitchell Baker (with whom the trademark buck stops) and see what they say. After they've agreed that nothing can be done, if that's their view, then let's talk about alternative names. Debian's goal is distributing a useful and free package. Useful for these is easy. Thanks. Free is a bit harder: it means that recipients have to be able to do Debian-like things with no trouble. So if you're concerned about quality and interested in protecting the Mozilla trademark, then Debian should strip it from the packages it distributes. Offloading that work to recipients is a bug, from Debian's point of view. It's very nice to hear that Mozilla's packaging things to make that easy -- a really good sign that our actual goals here are closely aligned. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla Oughtn't that be godsaic? -- Henning Makholm Den nyttige hjemmedatamat er og forbliver en myte. Generelt kan der ikke peges på databehandlingsopgaver af en sådan størrelsesorden og af en karaktér, som berettiger forestillingerne om den nye hjemme- og husholdningsteknologi.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla Oughtn't that be godsaic? My understanding of this is a bit shaky, but I'm told by trustworthy sources that the name of the atomic firebreathing lizard monster who knocks down Tokyo every February 2nd is pronounced much more like Gojira than Godzilla. Locals use the patterns of his breath to calibrate their seasonal calendar. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 05:35:55PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't want to negotiate on the names (again) unless we find a solution that has the backup from debian, from the current package maintainers (eric, takuo et al) and maybe from other free distributions. The last group is not accessible to me, since I have no connections to other projects. Maybe someone can help out on this? I certainly can't help you there, and I'm not sure there is any subentity within Debian that can usefully give you its blessing. BTW, I don't think they can claim the common words 'bird' and 'fox' their own, so 'freebird' would be valid as much as 'freefox' IMHO. The only name I am unsure of is 'freezilla'. But maybe we can work around this problem by naming it freexilla :) There's no disguising the fact that freefox and freebird were chosen to be similar to and evocative of the names firefox and thunderbird. It's a matter of whether they are *confusingly* similar. The easiest way to answer that would be to ask the Moz people whether they'd consider them confusingly similar or not. That's not the Mozilla authors' decision; confusingly similar is a call to be made by a judge, and common sense is a strong indicator for this. If the Mozilla authors try to claim that freebird and thunderbird are confusingly similar, they should be ignored. (The names firebird and freebird could be considered confusingly similar, however; I wouldn't opt for freebird as a replacement name here without buy-in from the Mozilla folks.) -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Steve Langasek wrote: confusingly similar, they should be ignored. (The names firebird and freebird could be considered confusingly similar, however; I wouldn't opt if the question is firebird vs. freebird, this might be a problem, but remember that they switched to firefox, because they _could not_ claim firebird their own. However, freefox vs. firefox might be a problem; but then let's consider something similar like wildfox or openfox. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That's not the Mozilla authors' decision; confusingly similar is a call to be made by a judge, and common sense is a strong indicator for this. If the Mozilla authors try to claim that freebird and thunderbird are confusingly similar, they should be ignored. (The names firebird and freebird could be considered confusingly similar, however; I wouldn't opt for freebird as a replacement name here without buy-in from the Mozilla folks.) If you want their buy-in for the last, it's only polite to seek their agreement for the earlier names. And what does it cost to build a little good-will with other projects? -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack wrote: So what do they basically want? They basically want us to comply to the community editions terms as described in [1]. This implies that we do not use any term that reads: Mozilla Thunderbird. Neither in the package-name nor in the application itself. Correct So what does this mean? The mozilla-thunderbird package should be named thunderbird (*sigh*). They feel this is most important and there is no way to No, worse; they want thunderbird-community-edition. Or thunderbird-community-edition-debian :-P Barring explicit special permission. It gets worse. From the trademark policy: -- Community members and organizations can start using the Firefox Community Edition and Thunderbird Community Edition trademarks from day one, but the Mozilla Foundation may require individuals or teams to stop doing so in the future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to give as much freedom to people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks as a mark of quality (which we are required to do in order to keep them). -- In other words, they can revoke the right to use the Thunderbird name entirely, on a whim. Is that acceptable (DFSG-free) or not? This is not an issue which I remember addressing before. If they did revoke permission in the future, you'd need to change all the names *again*. That might be an incentive to go the Iceweasel route immediately. :-P negotiate about the package name. In addition we need to make some changes to the thunderbird thunderbird-community-edition package. That is ... remove all Mozilla Thunderbird terms from the app (change to Debian Thunderbird). Debian Thunderbird Community Edition In addition all locale packages need to be adjusted. Yep. Another IMHO more important point is, that we need (they want us) to add a statement to the thunderbird copyright file like: People distributing works derived from the default Debian package of Thunderbird will have to also comply with the mozilla.org trademark policies, Thunderbird Community Edition or remove the trademarks entirely from the package. Obviously, if it's a just a copy of the package, no permission would be needed. Yes, that's a fine legal notice. So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions? Well, the legal notice is OK. I hope I've clarified what the trademark policy actually requires. :-P Whether that's free enough or not, I don't know. Some other parts I *don't* like: Therefore if you want to ship extenions, themes or plugins installed by default (as opposed to, say, linked as XPIs from the default start page) then you need to run the list past us for approval. ... Any rights to Mozilla Foundation trademarks granted in this document fall under an over-arching requirement that the use of the trademark be non-confusing and non-disparaging. Non-confusing is fine and good, of course. We love non-confusing. Non-disparaging is a unpleasant free speech infringment, and I don't like it one bit. It's probably included because of some stupid legal precedent By non-disparaging, we mean that (outside the bounds of fair use) you can't use our marks to be rude about us. If I remember correctly, the bounds of fair use in the US say you can pretty nearly always use the marks in criticism. What the heck is going on here? Is this referring purely to (the equivalent of) having a package labeled Mozilla with deliberate trash in it? Or is it actually about stifling criticism? These are trademarks with fairly strong restrictions on use claimed. The question is whether trademarks with such strong restrictions on use should be used under license by Debian in main, or considered non-free and stripped from main. I am not going to pretend to answer that question since I'm not sure. I'm inclined to say yes, it's free, but... If _not_, the only option left would be the iceweasel way mentioned in [1]. Which would have the advantage of not requiring a second round of work if the Mozilla Foundation decided to revoke permission to use the Community trademark license. So I would be inclined to do this Heh. I'm a fence-sitter. ... [1] - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html More nasty points: Addon packages should not, according to the trademark policy, be called thunderbird-enigmail, for instance. enigmail-for-thunderbird is fine though. (Whew.) [1] - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html --Nathanael Nerode
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, let's say I rename the package to 'somebird' and want to produce a good package for debian. Should I use a patched orig.tar.gz or is it ok to distribute the source as provided by upstream (of course without the trademarked icons) and patch the rest (e.g. thunderbird mozilla) during build? As long as we're discussing names I kind of like somebird, actually. It's cute and non-confusing. :-) For firefox, iceweasel has the amusing advantage of being directly in the Mozilla trademark licencing policy, thanks to my use of that name really early in the discussion. :-) It might be pretty easy to standardize it among different option 3 distributors for that reason. Of course, it is now in use as the abstract name for a renamed version, so maybe it wouldn't be so good to use it for a specific version. A name for the suite is hard.
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 01:30:58AM +0100, Alexander Sack wrote: mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. We knew this was coming. The Mozilla mob wanted their stuff to be treated as if it were non-modifiable even though the license doesn't say so, and we told them to go to hell. Always seemed to me like they don't really *want* to be free software. So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions? Uhh... with the name modified so as to break the grip of their trademarks, yes. Without it, probably not; an implicit You must make the following modifications before you change anything else clause is really pushing it (it's a lot worse than a change the name clause). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 12:49:04PM +, Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 01:30:58AM +0100, Alexander Sack wrote: mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. We knew this was coming. The Mozilla mob wanted their stuff to be treated as if it were non-modifiable even though the license doesn't say so, and we told them to go to hell. Always seemed to me like they don't really *want* to be free software. They actually want to be open source. Note that this name change requirement gets interesting to name Mozilla... Mozilla Thunderbird can be Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird Mozilla Firefox can be Firefox for Debian or Debian Firefox What can be Mozilla ? for Debian or Debian ? Mike
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
OK, I think it is a good idea to post the full mail for reference purpose. Gervase Markham wrote: Alexander Sack wrote: OK, please make a summary ASAP with the points that are needed, e.g. no package must be called something with mozilla, etc. Please keep in mind that we are about to release anytime soon, so we are a bit in a hurry here ;). Perhaps compose the mail in a such a way that makes you feel comfortable that I forward it to some public list (debian-legal, debian-release) or so. If you don't want me to forward your reply on this mail, let me know! Hi Alex, I apologise for the delay in replying. Here's a first attempt at balancing the concerns of mozilla.org and Debian with regard to the issue of trademarks and Thunderbird in Debian. Please let me have your feedback. The Debian concern is that the software they distribute is Free software. The mozilla.org concern is that everything labelled with our trademarks is of high quality. Both groups understand that this problem could be avoided simply by removing all the trademarks (because the software itself is Free), but that this is in the best interests of neither group. This document assumes that Debian would be distributing the application under the Community Edition section of the Trademark Policy: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html and making changes only as described therein, or as agreed with us. Logo: - The Thunderbird logo is not Free, so Debian would probably not want to distribute it anyway. There are alternative Free logos in the source repository you can use (which get included by default in builds made from it), or of course you may design your own, if it is not confusingly similar to the Foundation trademarked logo. Name: - In manuals, the title bar and other places, the software should officially refer to itself consistently as one of Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird (your choice; we prefer the first). If neither of these qualified names is acceptable, please suggest another. - Mozilla Thunderbird is the designation we use for official mozilla.org releases; therefore, no part of the package should be called, or refer to itself as Mozilla Thunderbird. - Subject to negotiations about the exact contents of and build options for the package, Debian may call their package and the executable thunderbird. (Such negotiations have basically been completed.) Derived Works: - People distributing works derived from the default Debian package of Thunderbird will have to also comply with the mozilla.org trademark policies, or remove the trademarks entirely from the package. Obviously, if it's a just a copy of the package, no permission would be needed. Debian would of course not be responsible for enforcing this; however, they may wish to (and we would request that they) make users aware of it. This last point is, to my mind, equivalent to the trademark permissions of e.g. the BSD, Apache or Apache 2.0 licenses. I.e. something like: The names *Thunderbird and Mozilla* must not be used to *label*, endorse or promote products derived from this software without prior written permission. (Base is Apache 1.0 trademark clause; emphasis indicates my addition.) Nothing in this restriction is meant to reduce Fair Use rights, for example the right to describe a program in a manual as derived from Thunderbird. Gerv -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Mike Hommey wrote: Note that this name change requirement gets interesting to name Mozilla... Mozilla Thunderbird can be Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird Mozilla Firefox can be Firefox for Debian or Debian Firefox What can be Mozilla ? for Debian or Debian ? I think they want us to negotiate all package names individually. In addition, they will be god for us (e.g. we add a patch, they have to agree). I think if we try this procedure and they usually do not complain, we can probably do it. I mean, just negotiate on the name und keep it running as usual, until they really claim that we need to remove a patch or something. if that happens, we can rethink our position and maybe drop the trademark symbols. Anyway, I guess we should try find a unique solution for all mozilla apps. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 10:03:20PM +0900, Mike Hommey wrote: Note that this name change requirement gets interesting to name Mozilla... Mozilla Thunderbird can be Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird Mozilla Firefox can be Firefox for Debian or Debian Firefox What can be Mozilla ? for Debian or Debian ? Neither please. Debian packages should be easily modified by other people, not just us. It doesn't achieve a great deal to replace their trademark with our own. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mike Hommey wrote: Note that this name change requirement gets interesting to name Mozilla... Mozilla Thunderbird can be Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird Mozilla Firefox can be Firefox for Debian or Debian Firefox What can be Mozilla ? for Debian or Debian ? I think they want us to negotiate all package names individually. In addition, they will be god for us (e.g. we add a patch, they have to agree). I think if we try this procedure and they usually do not complain, we can probably do it. I mean, just negotiate on the name und keep it running as usual, until they really claim that we need to remove a patch or something. if that happens, we can rethink our position and maybe drop the trademark symbols. Anyway, I guess we should try find a unique solution for all mozilla apps. Given the full message you posted, lightningbug - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird iceweasel - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla And what's the problem? It's OK with the Mozilla Project's trademark licenses. It lets users find the programs. It's honest. The only thing it loses is some publicity for Mozilla's programs. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Brian Thomas Sniffen writes: Given the full message you posted, lightningbug - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird iceweasel - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla And what's the problem? It's OK with the Mozilla Project's trademark licenses. It lets users find the programs. It's honest. The only thing it loses is some publicity for Mozilla's programs. Is gojira encumbered in Japan? Although the usual Romanization of the creature's name is Godzilla, a literal conversion might infringe the Japenese trademark. Rexilla/rexzilla seems to be available. Michael Poole
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: lightningbug - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird iceweasel - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla I don't like lightningbug . A bug is a bug and most people don't like bugs. tbird should still be a bird ... and since the removal of trademarks is an act of releasing it to freedom, why not just call it freebird? -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: lightningbug - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird iceweasel - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla OK, my final name suggestions would be: freebird - ...thunderbird freefox - ... firefox freezilla - ... mozilla Naming the packages like this would emphasize that we want to be free and not reigned by trademarks. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Andrew Suffield wrote: Neither please. Debian packages should be easily modified by other people, not just us. It doesn't achieve a great deal to replace their trademark with our own. OK, let's say I rename the package to 'somebird' and want to produce a good package for debian. Should I use a patched orig.tar.gz or is it ok to distribute the source as provided by upstream (of course without the trademarked icons) and patch the rest (e.g. thunderbird mozilla) during build? My preference (from a technical point of view) is to distribute the unmodified upstream tarball and patch it during build. It is easier to maintain ;) -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: freebird - ...thunderbird freefox - ... firefox freezilla - ... mozilla Naming the packages like this would emphasize that we want to be free and not reigned by trademarks. That's a really good idea. I'm not sure, but it looks from previous messages like you've been communicating with Mozilla Project people about this. Can you get some of them to agree that these are not confusingly similar names, to be very clear that they're not likely to complain later? Frankly, I'd expect them to be pissed. They are trying to write free software, after all -- so the implication that the Debian versions are *really* Free and what Mozilla's distributing aren't is likely to be difficult to swallow. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 10:15:05PM +0100, Alexander Sack wrote: Andrew Suffield wrote: Neither please. Debian packages should be easily modified by other people, not just us. It doesn't achieve a great deal to replace their trademark with our own. OK, let's say I rename the package to 'somebird' and want to produce a good package for debian. Should I use a patched orig.tar.gz or is it ok to distribute the source as provided by upstream (of course without the trademarked icons) and patch the rest (e.g. thunderbird mozilla) during build? They can't complain about trademarks if the file is the actual unmodified upstream tarball: accuracy is an ultimate defence against trademark claims. If it's been modified by removing stuff for copyright reasons then you might have a problem, depending on how they restrict use of the trademarks. The tarball stands alone for this one; the rest of the source package is irrelevant - if it's okay to distribute the stripped tarball alone, then it's okay as part of the debian package too. Might be worth asking them about it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 04:21:00PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Frankly, I'd expect them to be pissed. They are trying to write free software, after all -- so the implication that the Debian versions are *really* Free and what Mozilla's distributing aren't is likely to be difficult to swallow. It's true though, so fuck 'em. Increased awareness of this can't be a bad thing. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: That's a really good idea. I'm not sure, but it looks from previous messages like you've been communicating with Mozilla Project people about this. Can you get some of them to agree that these are not confusingly similar names, to be very clear that they're not likely to complain later? I don't want to negotiate on the names (again) unless we find a solution that has the backup from debian, from the current package maintainers (eric, takuo et al) and maybe from other free distributions. The last group is not accessible to me, since I have no connections to other projects. Maybe someone can help out on this? BTW, I don't think they can claim the common words 'bird' and 'fox' their own, so 'freebird' would be valid as much as 'freefox' IMHO. The only name I am unsure of is 'freezilla'. But maybe we can work around this problem by naming it freexilla :) -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Andrew Suffield wrote: They can't complain about trademarks if the file is the actual unmodified upstream tarball: accuracy is an ultimate defence against trademark claims. If it's been modified by removing stuff for copyright reasons then you might have a problem, depending on how they restrict use of the trademarks. The tarball stands alone for this one; the rest of the source package is irrelevant - if it's okay to distribute the stripped tarball alone, then it's okay as part of the debian package too. Might be worth asking them about it. I will ask how a free source tarball should look like and if they are planning to release one at some point. -- GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't want to negotiate on the names (again) unless we find a solution that has the backup from debian, from the current package maintainers (eric, takuo et al) and maybe from other free distributions. The last group is not accessible to me, since I have no connections to other projects. Maybe someone can help out on this? I certainly can't help you there, and I'm not sure there is any subentity within Debian that can usefully give you its blessing. BTW, I don't think they can claim the common words 'bird' and 'fox' their own, so 'freebird' would be valid as much as 'freefox' IMHO. The only name I am unsure of is 'freezilla'. But maybe we can work around this problem by naming it freexilla :) There's no disguising the fact that freefox and freebird were chosen to be similar to and evocative of the names firefox and thunderbird. It's a matter of whether they are *confusingly* similar. The easiest way to answer that would be to ask the Moz people whether they'd consider them confusingly similar or not. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 03:35:00PM +0100, Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mike Hommey wrote: Note that this name change requirement gets interesting to name Mozilla... Mozilla Thunderbird can be Thunderbird for Debian or Debian Thunderbird Mozilla Firefox can be Firefox for Debian or Debian Firefox What can be Mozilla ? for Debian or Debian ? I think they want us to negotiate all package names individually. In addition, they will be god for us (e.g. we add a patch, they have to agree). And who agrees with patches ? I have sent some of my patches for Firefox in their bugzilla in august and still got no other reaction than Ben, can you look into this ? And I asked for a review last month... If we have to wait for months to get an answer as to what they think about our patches, we can't do anything. Mike
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 08:52:24PM +0100, Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: lightningbug - Mail client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird iceweasel - Web browser derived from Mozilla Firefox gojira - Web browser and mail suite derived from Mozilla OK, my final name suggestions would be: freebird - ...thunderbird freefox - ... firefox freezilla - ... mozilla I think *zilla names should be avoided. IIRC, mozilla has had a problem with the Godzilla trademark owners a long time ago. Mike
mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi, mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. So what do they basically want? They basically want us to comply to the community editions terms as described in [1]. This implies that we do not use any term that reads: Mozilla Thunderbird. Neither in the package-name nor in the application itself. So what does this mean? The mozilla-thunderbird package should be named thunderbird (*sigh*). They feel this is most important and there is no way to negotiate about the package name. In addition we need to make some changes to the thunderbird package. That is ... remove all Mozilla Thunderbird terms from the app (change to Debian Thunderbird). In addition all locale packages need to be adjusted. Another IMHO more important point is, that we need (they want us) to add a statement to the thunderbird copyright file like: People distributing works derived from the default Debian package of Thunderbird will have to also comply with the mozilla.org trademark policies, or remove the trademarks entirely from the package. Obviously, if it's a just a copy of the package, no permission would be needed. So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions? If _not_, the only option left would be the iceweasel way mentioned in [1]. Cheers, Alexander [1] - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html - -- ~ GPG messages preferred. | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** ~ Alexander Sack | : :' : The universal ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | `. `' Operating System ~ http://www.jwsdot.com/ | `-http://www.debian.org/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFB00xCv8pLOKgkuT8RAoZfAJ9dwmou5GLVLMeyh5aGwb2poAFXqgCgnO97 FlPKN4cX1JIAQIGIcuIyaqo= =MYum -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
Alexander Sack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (Cc:ed because I've no idea if you read the list) People distributing works derived from the default Debian package of Thunderbird will have to also comply with the mozilla.org trademark policies, or remove the trademarks entirely from the package. Obviously, if it's a just a copy of the package, no permission would be needed. A /requirement/ that we add that to the copyright file is fairly unreasonable unless it's actually in the license. On the other hand, I don't think it's non-free - if it was in the license, it would be unnecessary but not non-free. The law already requires that provision. So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions? Think about it this way - if we started writing a new MUA from scratch, trademark law would prevent us from calling it Mozilla Thunderbird, even if the Mozilla people hadn't asked for us to make this change. If it's not possible for us to produce something with that name from scratch, I don't think it's non-free to ask us to change the name of derived works. Short-sighted, yes. An excellent way of losing community good-will, yes. But I think we can ship it in main. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Alexander Sack wrote: Hi, mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks. So what do they basically want? They basically want us to comply to the community editions terms as described in [1]. This implies that we do not use any term that reads: Mozilla Thunderbird. Neither in the package-name nor in the application itself. They may think this, but what we actually need to do is not miscontrue our package as being the official mozilla thunderbird. We should be able to say: Debian Lightningbug -- based on Mozilla Thunderbird(tm). Ideally, they would explicitly allow unofficial builds to use the name so long as they conspicuously identified them as such. But if they are unwilling to allow that, we should try to communicate with slackware and the other distributions and select a common unnoficial name. See Nathaniel Nerode's message[1] for more on this subject. Another IMHO more important point is, that we need (they want us) to add a statement to the thunderbird copyright file like: If they actually have this statement in their license, it's appropriate to add it. Otherwise, it's just uncessary junk. Stick it in a README.Debian or similar if you really must include it. So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions? If _not_, the only option left would be the iceweasel way mentioned in [1]. I'm not sure if you want to limit yourself to the types of modifications that the community trademark license gives you, especially as there were undoubtedly be security related issues discovered in thunderbird that will require real modification not allowed by the community trademark license. I personally would suggest the lightningbug nee iceweasel method. Don Armstrong 1: http://people.debian.org/~terpstra/message/20040228.014134.ef226d15.en.html -- There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance. -- William's Law http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
