Re: trademark policy draft - redux
On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 06:26:26PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Dear all, after having postponed this for way too long, here is the second, hopefully final, iteration of the trademark policy draft. I've discussed with SPI lawyers at SFLC all the comments collected during the past discussion, namely: […] The complete new draft is attached to this mail. Thanks everyone for the extra feedback you've provided. I've now gone ahead and committed a patch to the .wml file generating http://www.debian.org/trademark that contains the last policy draft discussed here, stamping it as Debian Trademark Policy, version 2.0. Similar to previous versions of the policy (published by former DPLs), I consider that a DPL decision on Debian assets, but I'm confident that we've reached a policy which is as consensual as it could be, without jeopardizing our future possibilities to defend our marks. The new text at http://www.debian.org/trademark will be live at the next pulse of website regeneration. Thanks to David Prévot for his feedback on an early draft of my patch for that page. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft - redux
Le Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 06:26:26PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit : 5) demote the obligation that, when using the trademarks for commercial purposes, one should advertise how much of the price will be donated to the Debian Project. It is now a recommendation only Thanks a lot, Stefano, for this change. I think that it will strenghen our position when asking to relax license clauses restricting commercial use for some software we distribute or would like to distibute. I have one final comment, not related to the above. For understandable reasons, the proposed trademark policy is quite insisting on not misrepresenting Debian. But how about parody and satire ? Do we rely on fair use regulations in each countries to allow them despite our trademark policy ? Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130107123920.ga1...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: trademark policy draft - redux
On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 09:39:20PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: Thanks a lot, Stefano, for this change. I think that it will strenghen our position when asking to relax license clauses restricting commercial use for some software we distribute or would like to distibute. Thanks for your feedback, Charles. I have one final comment, not related to the above. For understandable reasons, the proposed trademark policy is quite insisting on not misrepresenting Debian. But how about parody and satire ? Do we rely on fair use regulations in each countries to allow them despite our trademark policy ? IIRC it is something we have discussed in the previous occurrence of this thread. But in the avoidance of doubt: the policy, and trademarks in general, do not care much about misrepresenting Debian as in parody and satire. Rather, they care about avoiding customer confusion. So it is perfectly fine to mock Debian; what is not fine is pretending you're shipping Debian to users while you're shipping, say, Windows with malware or a different distribution (in the latter case you can of course redistribute by simply stating based on Debian, as many custom Debian modifications out there already do). Hope this clarifies, Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
trademark policy draft - redux
[ please refer to
https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00047.html
and subsequent thread for context ]
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 06:07:17PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
I'm happy to attach a first complete draft of such a policy, and I'm
looking for comment on it.
Dear all, after having postponed this for way too long, here is the
second, hopefully final, iteration of the trademark policy draft. I've
discussed with SPI lawyers at SFLC all the comments collected during the
past discussion, namely:
1) [minor] make it clear in the first section that those are permissions
for using the trademark(s) without having to ask permission
explicitly (rationale: diminish the burden of answering bogus
requests)
2) [editorial] DEBIAN - Debian
3) [editorial] SPI, INC - Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
4) [minor] in section Permission to Use, make it clear (again) that
one should not mail us for permissions already granted in the policy
5) demote the obligation that, when using the trademarks for commercial
purposes, one should advertise how much of the price will be donated
to the Debian Project. It is now a recommendation only
6) drop you cannot alter the […] trademarks in any way (rationale: the
main goal is avoiding customer confusion, and that is already stated
elsewhere)
7) drop obligation to retain official logo color
8) drop obligation to retain logo proportion when scaling
They have all been implemented except the last one, number (8). Given
the logo is not a registered trademark, we have been advised to be a bit
stricter for that one, hence the requirement remains. Nonetheless, this
requirement looks compatible with the inbound trademark policy for the
archive we have been discussed previously.
The complete new draft is attached to this mail.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
\section{DRAFT Debian Trademark Policy DRAFT}
Software in the Public Interest, Inc. owns a number of trademarks in both word
and logo form including brands, slogans, styles. This policy encompasses all
marks, in word and logo form, collectively referred to as ``Debian
trademarks''. You can see a non-exhaustive list of Debian trademarks, including
both registered and unregistered (but otherwise legally recognized) trademarks
at: \texttt{http://www.debian.org/trademark} .
The objective of this trademark policy is :
1) To encourage widespread use and adoption of the Debian trademarks,
2) To clarify proper usage of Debian trademarks by third parties,
3) To prevent misuse of Debian trademarks that can confuse or mislead users
with respect to Debian or its affiliates.
Please note that it is not the goal of this policy to limit commercial activity
around Debian. We encourage businesses to work on Debian while being compliant
with this policy.
Following are the guidelines for the proper use of Debian trademarks by
publishers and other third parties. Any use of or reference to Debian
trademarks that is inconsistent with these guidelines, or other unauthorized
use of or reference to Debian trademarks, or use of marks that are confusingly
similar to Debian trademarks, is prohibited and may violate Debian trademark
rights.
Any use of Debian trademarks in a misleading and false manner or in a manner
that disparages Debian, such as untruthful advertising, is always prohibited.
\subsection{When Can You Use the Debian Trademarks Without Asking Permission}
\begin{enumerate}[1.]
\item You can use Debian trademarks to make true factual statements about
Debian or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully.
\item Your intended use qualifies as nominative fair use of the Debian
trademarks, i.e., merely identifying that you are talking about Debian in a
text, without suggesting sponsorship or endorsement.
\item You can use Debian trademarks to describe or advertise your services or
products relating to Debian in a way that is not misleading.
\item You can use Debian trademarks to describe Debian in articles, titles or
blog posts.
\item You can make t-shirts, desktop wallpapers, caps, or other merchandise
with Debian trademarks for \emph{non-commercial usage}.
You can also make merchandise with Debian trademarks for \emph{commercial
usage}. In case of \emph{commercial usage}, we recommend that you
truthfully advertise to customers which part of the selling price, if any,
will be donated to the Debian project. See
\texttt{http://www.debian.org/donations} for more information on how to
donate to the Debian project.
\end{enumerate}
\subsection{When You Can NEVER Use the Debian Trademarks Without Asking
Permission}
\begin{enumerate}[1.]
\item You cannot use Debian trademarks
Re: trademark policy draft
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 03:30:16PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: Down to the specificities of Debian procedures, I consider my duty to take care of Debian assets, including trademarks. I would not take the responsibility of acting in a way that --- according to our legal advisors --- might endanger them.. Even if there was a clear consensus that endangering the trademark was the Right Thing To Do? […] For a free software project like Debian, I believe it's more important to uphold the principle of not being jerky to our neighbors than it is to have an ironclad assurance that our trademark could never be invalidated. I don't think the argument we could lose our trademark unless we [...] is complete unless it also includes some examination of how likely that outcome really is. You raised various important points. According to my reading of the sub-thread started at Thijs' message, we were discussing giving up the trademarks all together (just let go of these trademarks [1]). As it happens, different participants in the sub-thread might have head different opinions. But on such an extreme position, yes, I don't think I would trust apparent consensus on any mailing list. For various reasons. One is that many people tend not to care about bureaucratic topics (and I surely won't blame them for that :-)). Another is that it'd be a typical instance of the age long democracy vs technocracy debate. Very few of us --- if any --- are experts in trademark law (as several threads have shown), and I do not consider myself among them. So the consensus would hardly be well-informed. The above doesn't imply we could not implement the extreme position of giving up trademarks. It simply mean that I wouldn't personally do it, on the sole basis of apparent consensus. There are other ways, such as a GR, overruling me or not (depending on how it'll be formulated0. It wouldn't be such a big deal, and I surely would not take it personally. [1] as I'm not sure if a formal act to do that exists, let's assume for the sake of this discussion give up trademark ~= act in a way that would be considered, trademark-wise, foolish by any trademark expert you could find on the planet I'm hoping to write a longer response to the proposed policy where I can do justice to the specifics, Please do :-) but for the moment, suffice it to say that I think that some of the recommendations for how to protect our trademark cross the line from things it's reasonable for everyone to do to protect their mark into jerky things that you do because there's some bit of case law somewhere that led to a mark being invalidated and you're paranoid that the same thing will happen to you. Sometimes the right answer is that the case law is *bad* and needs to be overturned - which never happens if no one is willing to take a stand against it. I agree with this. In dealing with lawyers on behalf of Debian, I've quickly learned that there are almost never 100% safe or 100% risky positions. It is *always* a cost/benefit/risk analysis. You ask the experts to evaluate the risks of the positions you're interested in, and then you pick a position. I wouldn't call the position implemented by the first policy I've posted here paranoid. But, as I mentioned before, there might be extra constraints that might be loosened, which have fallen through the cracks. I do hope that most of the criticism that have been raised in this thread could be addressed in the second draft --- but as I haven't yet received it, I'm not sure yet. If you, or anyone else, have arguments to justify the loosening of further constraints in the policy, by all means bring them forward. But please realize that I will likely turn down arguments of the I think that... kind, when they go against the legal advice we've got. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, August 14, 2012 16:51, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: I agree with this. In dealing with lawyers on behalf of Debian, I've quickly learned that there are almost never 100% safe or 100% risky positions. It is *always* a cost/benefit/risk analysis. You ask the experts to evaluate the risks of the positions you're interested in, and then you pick a position. It's surely a cost/benefit/risk analysis, but either of them is hard to quantify. We may know how much money we pay to the registration offices (do we?), but there's also the manpower we spend on drafting a policy, processing trademark requests, consuming the time of our legal advisors, etc. And a potential cost in goodwill (being perceived as 'jerky'). The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free. It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of which we do not know if or when it will happen. Or how many extra costs we need to incur then to actually enforce our trademark in the legal system. Keeping the trademarks has costs, the benefits are uncertain, and there seem to be many examples of projects getting along fine without any. For me the tradeoff is clear. Cheers, Thijs -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ba699cde998bc92d936432a64a5c0535.squir...@wm.kinkhorst.nl
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free. It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of which we do not know if or when it will happen. For what its worth, there are existing situations: e.g. debian-news.net, debian-administration.org, debianadmin.com, debian-handbook.info, debian-multimedia.org. Only one of those has been specifically opposed by the project, and a kind request resulted in a domain rename without any kind of legal wrangling (now deb-multimedia.org). So, point being that results can already be achieved without any kind of legal hammer. Best wishes, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CANTw=mnyo4-xitacfbbspqh_yjufkedoroupz7a0xq4qvv_...@mail.gmail.com
Re: trademark policy draft
Michael Gilbert writes (Re: trademark policy draft): On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free. It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of which we do not know if or when it will happen. For what its worth, there are existing situations: e.g. debian-news.net, debian-administration.org, debianadmin.com, debian-handbook.info, debian-multimedia.org. Only one of those has been specifically opposed by the project, and a kind request resulted in a domain rename without any kind of legal wrangling (now deb-multimedia.org). I don't think you can say that this rename wasn't made easier by our possession of the trademark. I wasn't involved in the discussions with the other project but whenever you have a negotation like this, the legal context is in the background. Like any other dispute, these kinds of things are normally resolved without having to go to a formal dispute resolution - but what _would_ happen if the dispute were to be escalated is a very important factor in the negotiations. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20522.33850.96601.365...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: trademark policy draft
On Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 03:25:55PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Thijs Kinkhorst writes (Re: trademark policy draft): On Wed, August 1, 2012 18:54, Russ Allbery wrote: We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just creating a better usage policy. I would not be in favour of this. FWIW, I agree with Ian's position here. Generally speaking, I think there is room in Free Software for project marks and that, in principle, there is nothing wrong with defending them. As observed elsewhere in this thread, it is just hard to defend them in a reasonable way, given that the law is what it is. Oddly enough, trademark policies that try to embrace Free Software principle are still relatively uncharted territory, which is slowly getting better in recent years. By giving it a try, working together with lawyers that do understand Free Software, I think we can actually contribute something useful for other Free Software projects out there. Down to the specificities of Debian procedures, I consider my duty to take care of Debian assets, including trademarks. I would not take the responsibility of acting in a way that --- according to our legal advisors --- might endanger them.. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Sun, Aug 05, 2012 at 11:08:04PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: first of all, thanks for working on this issue, especially taking into account that the outcome could be a hopefully acceptable trademark policy and a DFSG-free Open Use Logo with Debian, as you mentioned in your latest bit from the DPL message [1]: […] As a general status update on this: - I've collected the comments I got from this thread and elsewhere (private mail, /query, etc.), and forwarded them to SFLC, asking for a new draft. (Tentative) ETA for it is this week. - to disentangle the issues of 1/ relicensing the logo under a better (copyright) license and 2/ defining a new trademark policy, I've also asked for a minimal patch to our *current* trademark policy that would allow the relicensing to happen in isolation. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Hi Stefano, On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 08:07:02PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: On Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 03:25:55PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Thijs Kinkhorst writes (Re: trademark policy draft): On Wed, August 1, 2012 18:54, Russ Allbery wrote: We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just creating a better usage policy. I would not be in favour of this. FWIW, I agree with Ian's position here. Generally speaking, I think there is room in Free Software for project marks and that, in principle, there is nothing wrong with defending them. As observed elsewhere in this thread, it is just hard to defend them in a reasonable way, given that the law is what it is. Oddly enough, trademark policies that try to embrace Free Software principle are still relatively uncharted territory, which is slowly getting better in recent years. By giving it a try, working together with lawyers that do understand Free Software, I think we can actually contribute something useful for other Free Software projects out there. Down to the specificities of Debian procedures, I consider my duty to take care of Debian assets, including trademarks. I would not take the responsibility of acting in a way that --- according to our legal advisors --- might endanger them.. Even if there was a clear consensus that endangering the trademark was the Right Thing To Do? I'm hoping to write a longer response to the proposed policy where I can do justice to the specifics, but for the moment, suffice it to say that I think that some of the recommendations for how to protect our trademark cross the line from things it's reasonable for everyone to do to protect their mark into jerky things that you do because there's some bit of case law somewhere that led to a mark being invalidated and you're paranoid that the same thing will happen to you. Sometimes the right answer is that the case law is *bad* and needs to be overturned - which never happens if no one is willing to take a stand against it. For a free software project like Debian, I believe it's more important to uphold the principle of not being jerky to our neighbors than it is to have an ironclad assurance that our trademark could never be invalidated. I don't think the argument we could lose our trademark unless we [...] is complete unless it also includes some examination of how likely that outcome really is. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Francesco Poli invernom...@paranoici.org writes: ... [...] \item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way. [...] \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo. \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors. [...] These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes). Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]). [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles. There are some things that one needs to do simply to maintain a trademark. I'm pretty sure that the bits you are objecting to are included in that set (although IANAL). If we don't do those things, we might as well not have a trademark, so if you're arguing for us to avoid doing those minimum things we might as well just discard the trademark now. The alternative would seem to be a lot of wasted time here, followed by a lot of wasted effort for the lawyers who are kind enough to give us their time, arriving at the eventual discovery that as a result of our own incompetence we don't have a defensible trademark anyway. Note that I'm not arguing that we _should_ have a trademark -- I'm with Lars in that I think it's somewhat distasteful for Debian to be dirtying our hands with this, but if that's the only way we can stop some bastard From distributing Official Debian CDs that turn out to be packed with back-doors and trojans, then we need to do the legal bits properly, and that involves following the legal advice we receive, rather than spouting unfounded drivel about what we might like the law to be. As it happens, we seem to have managed to survive without lawyers enforcing trademarks thus far, so perhaps it really is not the only way. That said, those granted the right to play with the trademark can presumably do so. We just need to grant that permission in the cases you seem concerned about. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND pgpp1Uf5lTAqJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:46:34 +0100 Philip Hands wrote: Francesco Poli invernom...@paranoici.org writes: ... [...] \item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way. [...] \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo. \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors. [...] These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes). Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]). [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles. There are some things that one needs to do simply to maintain a trademark. I'm pretty sure that the bits you are objecting to are included in that set (although IANAL). [...] Note that I'm not arguing that we _should_ have a trademark I don't know, maybe the Debian Project should not hold trademarks (through SPI or otherwise)... The fact is, are we sure that the price to pay for holding a trademark is forbidding things like the following wallpapers, for instance? http://debian-art.org/content/show.php/Debian+Wood?content=152000PHPSESSID=06778f75eae318b9f3f0827945cca0f6 http://debian-art.org/content/show.php/Debian+Marble?content=151968PHPSESSID=06778f75eae318b9f3f0827945cca0f6 http://www.superbwallpapers.com/computers/debian-7234/ http://www.superbwallpapers.com/computers/debian-7255/ http://www.superbwallpapers.com/computers/debian-7271/ http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Art+Debian+Wallpaper+The+New+Debian+Linux+Pics.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Cool+Debian+Dark+Wallpaper+Debian+Black+Wallpapers.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+1024X768+Wallpaper+Desktop+Simple+and+Cool+Debian+Logo.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Abstract+Wallpaper+Linux+I+Love+My+Debian.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Ball+Wallpaper+Linux+Debian+Try+The+New+Debian+Desktop.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Cloud+Linux+Wallpaper+Blue+Sky+on+Debian+Desktop.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+For+Desktop+Wallpaper+Debian+Project+Pictures.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Image+Wallpaper+Debian+Picture+Wallpaper+2008.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Linux+Gnu+Wallpapers+Desktop+Debian+Alternatives.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Picture+Wallpaper+Desktop+Wallpapers.jpg.html? http://www.wallpaperlinux.com/v/Debian/Debian+Plastik+Wallpaper+Linux+Debian+Desktop.jpg.html? and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, ... And if this is really the price to pay, isn't too high a price? -- I'm with Lars in that I think it's somewhat distasteful for Debian to be dirtying our hands with this, but if that's the only way we can stop some bastard From distributing Official Debian CDs that turn out to be packed with back-doors and trojans, then we need to do the legal bits properly, and that involves following the legal advice we receive, rather than spouting unfounded drivel about what we might like the law to be. I am not a lawyer, and I have very little knowledge of trademark laws (I am a debian-legal regular, but we talk about copyrights much more often than about trademarks there...). It is not my intention to spout drivel, but I really hope that an acceptable solution exists *within the law* and *within Free Software principles* at the same time. Otherwise the Project should go a totally different way (maybe abandoning its trademarks, as said above, I don't know...). [...] That said, those granted the right to play with the trademark can presumably do so. We just need to grant that permission in the cases you seem concerned about. Grant special permissions to *all* those people wanting to create a wallpaper referring to Debian?!? And to *all* those people wanting to do other creative things with Debian trademarks/logos?!? I think that the only feasible way to do that is granting those permissions *inside* the trademark policy itself, which is not too different from dropping the restrictions I quoted, as I was suggesting... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgp4dd7gdo5NC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, August 1, 2012 18:54, Russ Allbery wrote: Lars Wirzenius l...@liw.fi writes: I'll leave the discussion with this counter suggestion: change the trademark policy to say: We call ourselves the Debian project. You can use our name as long as it doesn't make reasonable people confuse you or your stuff with us or our stuff, or imply that we're affiliated with or endorse you. You can use our logos under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (US) or later license. So, again, the reason why it doesn't read like this is because we got actual legal advice and the lawyers said that we can't make it read like that. We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just creating a better usage policy. I would just like to register that I would be in favour of that: just let go of these trademarks, which gains people maximum freedom and creates for us the least policies and the least hassle. And it also saves money. That sounds like a win. Of course there are some imaginable uses of a trademark: to protect against bad guys misrepresenting us. We have to balance this potential future possible benefit against the current costs, policy and hassle these trademarks bring us and more notably people wanting to do good things based on Debian. And factor in the huge costs a lawsuit against a trademark infringer would bring (as I understand it, we would be required to act on any infringement in order not to lose the trademark). Many other projects don't have any trademarks, and to my knowledge are not quite swamped by counterfeit ripoffs. For me the balance tips to the 'no trademarks' side. Cheers, Thijs -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/bcb59938bbd0461d4797f8cee49cc116.squir...@wm.kinkhorst.nl
Re: trademark policy draft
Thijs Kinkhorst writes (Re: trademark policy draft): On Wed, August 1, 2012 18:54, Russ Allbery wrote: We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just creating a better usage policy. I would not be in favour of this. I think it is perfectly fine for Debian to have and enforce trademarks on our name and logo. There is nothing stopping people using other names and othe rlogos. Of course there are some imaginable uses of a trademark: to protect against bad guys misrepresenting us. We have to balance this potential future possible benefit against the current costs, policy and hassle these trademarks bring us and more notably people wanting to do good things based on Debian. [...] What costs and hassle do these trademarks impose on people wanting to do good things based on Debian ? All it requires is that they don't pretend that they have our endorsement. Of course a corrollary is that nothing in Debian should be branded with Debian trademarks in a way that means someone deriving from Debian without our permission is supposed to fiddle about with branding. If there are any such cases they are bugs and should be dealt with as such. Our reputation is valuable and I don't want to see people trading on it (whether in commerce or otherwise) without our permission. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20511.54259.133391.803...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: trademark policy draft
Philip Hands p...@hands.com writes: Francesco Poli invernom...@paranoici.org writes: ... [...] \item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way. [...] \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo. \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors. [...] These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes). Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]). [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles. I agree that these restrictions prohibit many uses of the logo that I would consider acceptable. As Russ pointed out they might be necessary to be able to protect our logo at all. In that case I think we should not register a trademark for the logo. Maybe we could ask the SPI lawyers if a policy in a similar spirit to the one for the text mark would be possible for the logo. In other words do not use the logo in a misleading way (formulated in proper legal language). There are some things that one needs to do simply to maintain a trademark. I'm pretty sure that the bits you are objecting to are included in that set (although IANAL). If we don't do those things, we might as well not have a trademark, so if you're arguing for us to avoid doing those minimum things we might as well just discard the trademark now. The alternative would seem to be a lot of wasted time here, followed by a lot of wasted effort for the lawyers who are kind enough to give us their time, arriving at the eventual discovery that as a result of our own incompetence we don't have a defensible trademark anyway. Note that I'm not arguing that we _should_ have a trademark -- I'm with Lars in that I think it's somewhat distasteful for Debian to be dirtying our hands with this, but if that's the only way we can stop some bastard From distributing Official Debian CDs that turn out to be packed with back-doors and trojans, then we need to do the legal bits properly, and that involves following the legal advice we receive, rather than spouting unfounded drivel about what we might like the law to be. A middle way could be to not tradmark our logo. As Stefano stated in the initial mail they are not trademarked at the moment, but SPI lawyers recomend it. This would still stop evil doers from distributing Official Debian CDs but not from distributing CDs with the Debian logo without any mention of Debian. As the Debian (open use) logo is far from unique anyway this would be a fair compromise IMHO. Gaudenz -- Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett ~ pgpASXZud66Oy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Gaudenz Steinlin gaud...@soziologie.ch wrote: Philip Hands p...@hands.com writes: Francesco Poli invernom...@paranoici.org writes: ... [...] \item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way. [...] \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo. \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors. [...] These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes). Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]). [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles. I agree that these restrictions prohibit many uses of the logo that I would consider acceptable. As Russ pointed out they might be necessary to be able to protect our logo at all. In that case I think we should not register a trademark for the logo. Maybe we could ask the SPI lawyers if a policy in a similar spirit to the one for the text mark would be possible for the logo. In other words do not use the logo in a misleading way (formulated in proper legal language). There are some things that one needs to do simply to maintain a trademark. I'm pretty sure that the bits you are objecting to are included in that set (although IANAL). If we don't do those things, we might as well not have a trademark, so if you're arguing for us to avoid doing those minimum things we might as well just discard the trademark now. The alternative would seem to be a lot of wasted time here, followed by a lot of wasted effort for the lawyers who are kind enough to give us their time, arriving at the eventual discovery that as a result of our own incompetence we don't have a defensible trademark anyway. Note that I'm not arguing that we _should_ have a trademark -- I'm with Lars in that I think it's somewhat distasteful for Debian to be dirtying our hands with this, but if that's the only way we can stop some bastard From distributing Official Debian CDs that turn out to be packed with back-doors and trojans, then we need to do the legal bits properly, and that involves following the legal advice we receive, rather than spouting unfounded drivel about what we might like the law to be. A middle way could be to not tradmark our logo. As Stefano stated in the initial mail they are not trademarked at the moment, but SPI lawyers recomend it. This would still stop evil doers from distributing Official Debian CDs but not from distributing CDs with the Debian logo without any mention of Debian. As the Debian (open use) logo is far from unique anyway this would be a fair compromise IMHO. I believe that the Debian project should be trademarked in name and image, and we should defend the trademark, as both the Debian name and the logo, are fairly well recognized, and have built a lot of good-will over the years, that I don't believe anyone wants diluted by misuse. Would we be ok if a large company, like Oracle, forked Debian in a non DFSG way, and started selling it as Enterprise Debian with our logo on their site? Without a trademark, we have no legal recourse to address this issue. Not registering the trademarks would also be a mistake because if we don't, someone else is free to do so, and prevent us from using them. Although I do suspect that the likelihood of either of these scenarios coming to bear, are relatively low, if we wait until after it occurs it will be too late, and we will have no clear recourse to address the issues. The draft as written appears to be a good starting point, as it appears to largely follow basic trademark laws. I understand the concern about hindering creative use of the logo, and I don't really think anyone really wants to put a stop to this. I think one way to address the permission issue is to have a *very* lightweight approval process. Perhaps a webform, but the idea here would be to have an approval process that is as lightweight as possible, but still fulfilling the legal requirement that we are protecting the mark. (I leave it to counsel to advise what this might look like, and whether or not it is appropriate to put the details in the document.) -Brian Gaudenz -- Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett ~ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CACFaiRyyVg=cxdmxyjwyc63gx4583foak5sewqeycy66yp1...@mail.gmail.com
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:07:17 +0200 Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
If you've ever stumbled upon http://www.debian.org/trademark , you might
be aware that, as a project, we've been working on a proper trademark
policy since quite a while.
I'm happy to attach a first complete draft of such a policy, and I'm
looking for comment on it.
[...]
Stefano,
first of all, thanks for working on this issue, especially taking into
account that the outcome could be a hopefully acceptable trademark
policy and a DFSG-free Open Use Logo with Debian, as you mentioned in
your latest bit from the DPL message [1]:
| - to stop the absurdity of not using the official logo (with Debian)
| as part of our official theme, I advanced a bit on the topic of
| relicensing the logo under a DFSG-free license. I sought a second
| legal advice to SFLC (as requested by the SPI board). They confirm we
| can safely do the relicensing (without undermining our rights on
| contained marks) under a license like dual LGPLv3+ / CC-BY-SA,
| provided that a suitable trademark policy is in place …
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/08/msg1.html
Before commenting on the draft trademark policy, I would like to ask
why it was suggested to dual license the Open Use Logo with Debian
under LGPLv3+ / CC-by-sa.
Why not under the Expat license, as the Open Use Logo without Debian?
Maybe a copyleft better protects the trademarked text?
I am not sure I understand why...
Anyway, as long as a copyleft is needed, I think that a LGPLv3+ /
CC-by-sa dual license would be a poor choice, since it's
GPLv3-compatible, but GPLv2-incompatible.
I don't think the Debian Project should prevent its Open Use Logo from
being embedded into a GPLv2-licensed work.
I would suggest at least licensing under LGPLv2.1+ ...
As far as the draft policy is concerned, I don't especially like the
restriction on commercial merchandising:
[...]
\item You can make t-shirts, desktop wallpapers, caps, or other merchandise
with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{non-commercial usage}. You can also make
merchandise with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{commercial usage} provided
that,
in addition to following the guidelines listed below, you truthfully
advertise to customers which part of the selling price will be donated to
the
DEBIAN project. See \texttt{http://www.debian.org/donations} for more
information on how to donate to the DEBIAN project.
I think the provided that should be demoted to a non-binding
we kindly request.
[...]
\item You cannot alter the DEBIAN trademarks in any way.
[...]
\item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo.
\item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors.
[...]
These restrictions are currently violated by countless uses of Debian
logos (above all) and of the Debian textual trademark (sometimes).
Several such uses are done by the Debian Project itself, most notably
in desktop themes shipped as official Debian themes (for instance the
very nice default wheezy theme, named Joy [2]).
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
I think that these restrictions should be dropped entirely, since they
seem to be incompatible with the basic Free Software principles.
P.S.: I am not subscribed to debian-project, so please Cc me on
replies. Thanks.
--
http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
. Francesco Poli .
GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
pgpz289zsvmes.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Luca BRUNO lu...@debian.org writes: Stefano Zacchiroli scrisse: \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent. So debian.mirror.my.org is illegal? I've been correct by Mako on this before. Short answer: hostname != domain name, so debian.mirror.my.org is perfectly fine. (No, I don't have a clear definition for domain name to offer, but it is intended here as the things that you register via a domain name registrar.) IMHO it is already clear as it is, opposing a plain domain name to a fully qualified domain name, but maybe you may prefer an explanatory parenthesis as in: \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name (ie. a second-level domain or equivalent), with or without commercial intent. The trouble with trying to nail that definition down is that there are people who are foolish enough to buy domains of the form: debian.uk.com which is not a second-level domain in any sense, as it's a sub-domain of the normally registered uk.com. On the other hand, the sorts of people that are liable to be confused by Debian trademark abuse, are also going to be confused by the distinction between .uk.com and .co.uk Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND pgpJirGvlMHOX.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Le Thu, Aug 02, 2012 at 08:38:09AM +0100, Philip Hands a écrit : The trouble with trying to nail that definition down is that there are people who are foolish enough to buy domains of the form: debian.uk.com In that case, I think that the problem is rather that the uk-dot-com-registar-redirects-all-queries.uk.com Cheers, -- Charles -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120802075355.ga17...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: trademark policy draft
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Actually, I've realize only later an important overlook in my first follow-up to this. This provision is positive, in the you can use our trademarks to ... form. As such, it is just a public declaration that we are with that kind of use. It does *not* follow from it that the negation of that statement is forbidden. Thanks, that was possibly a better reply than my snarky ill-informed statement merited. Lars Wirzenius I don't think I want to participate in this discussion much, since the entire premise seems unacceptable to my value system. At the same time, I find myself agreeing with Lars.. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 01:37:06PM -0600, Paul Wise wrote:
I'm happy to attach a first complete draft of such a policy, and I'm
looking for comment on it.
Some of the things that are explicitly allowed by the policy are
things that AFAIK are not restricted by trademark law, is the purpose
of including those to reduce the number of questions from people who
aren't well informed about the restrictions in trademark law?
Yes, and in my experience that is very much needed. For example, we
already get quite a number of requests at trademark@d.o which are, in
fact, fully covered by nominative usage. As such, they are useless
requests but they still come in. Documenting more visibly when they are
not needed will reduce our load in handling them.
Does the domain name restriction mean that sites like these will have
to rename themselves?
Peter is right on this: we should give them explicit permission. But
note that this part, in most cases, is a no-op change wrt the current
policy, which already restricts the usage of the debian name in domain
names by others.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 07:10:51AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
I think that we should show the example and remove restrictions on the
commercial use of our trademark. We can of course, in a non-normative
section, keep a recommendation to indicate if a donation will be made
to Debian.
Thanks for your feedback on this.
Here are minor comments.
- It would be nice to indicate somewhere which restrictions stem from
laws, and which restrictions are additions by us.
As a disclaimer, trademark policies are not as binding as other law-ish
stuff we tend to be more familiar with, such as copyright licenses. They
offer the owner own interpretation of what constitute proper usage of
some mark. This is to say that stem from laws is less well-defined
than what you might think.
That said, I think I've already commented on this in my premise. We've
asked SPI lawyers for a trademark policy as free as possible, as long
as it allows us to retain our trademark rights. As long as we trust
their judgements what we've got is, essentially, stemming from law.
The only addition is the merchandise provision, on which I've explicitly
asked for feedback.
- If this policy focuses on trademarks owned by SPI, perhaps it can
exhaustively list them ?
Yes, but they'll be listed side by side with the policy, rather than
within it. In fact, this is already the case at
http://www.debian.org/trademark/
- Is it necessary to capitalise DEBIAN in the document ?
In my experience is the canonical form that one use in such documents; I
believe textual trademarks are case-insensitive anyhow.
- Requests to not be misleading and be truthful are vague.
Again, common and tested practice in trademark law, AFAIU.
- When one can use the Debian trademarks without asking, is it because of
fair
use, or is it because Debian grants a trademark license ?
Neither. First of all it wouldn't be fair use (which is in the realm
of copyright), but it'd rather be nominative use (which is in the
realm of trademark). And again, it is our own interpretation of what
would constitute usage of our marks in a way that does not dilute the
Debian identity, which is the purpose of a trademark policy document.
It'd be useful if people interested in participating in this discussion
could review some general info about trademark law. They're available in
a number of places, including wikipedia and --- for a more Free Software
oriented view --- in a nice FAQ on SFLC website.
- Imagine that we in Debian follow the spirit of this policy when using other
trademarks (GNOME, Linux, etc.) in our websites. Wouldn't the requriement
of including a disclaimer be a bit heavy ?
Nope, as nominative use is permitted by trademark law in general anyhow.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
* Stefano Zacchiroli lea...@debian.org [2012-07-31 18:07]:
\subsection{When to Use the DEBIAN Trademarks}
I'd change this to When You Can Use the DEBIAN Trademarks or When
You Can Use the DEBIAN Trademarks Without Permission.
\item You can make t-shirts, desktop wallpapers, caps, or other merchandise
with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{non-commercial usage}. You can also make
merchandise with DEBIAN trademarks for \emph{commercial usage} provided that,
This of course opens the usual can of worms as to what commercial
actually means. Maybe it could be if you're planning to sell
t-shirts for a profit instead; but maybe it doesn't matter.
in addition to following the guidelines listed below, you truthfully
advertise to customers which part of the selling price will be donated to the
How about adding (if any) after selling price to make it clear
that a donation is optional?
\item Acknowledge of SPI's ownership of the DEBIAN trademark prominently.
^
\item Include a disclaimer of sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement by
DEBIAN on your website and on all related printed materials.
EXAMPLES:
X PROJECT is not affiliated with DEBIAN. DEBIAN is a registered trademark
owned by SPI, INC.
Shouldn't this be Software in the Public Interest, Inc. rather than
SPI, Inc. Afaik the former is the official name of the
organization.
\subsection{Permission To Use}
To obtain permission to use the DEBIAN trademarks send an email to
\texttt{tradem...@debian.org}
Given your earlier comments that people ask for permission even when
they don't have to, I think this section should state more clearly
when people have to email tradem...@debian.org to obtain permission.
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120801101254.ga1...@jirafa.cyrius.com
Re: trademark policy draft
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: \item You can use DEBIAN trademarks to make true factual statements about DEBIAN or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully. Can I use DEBIAN trademarks to make snarky ill-supported statements? (Anticipating a decrease in list traffic.) \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent. So debian.mirror.my.org is illegal? -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On 08/01/2012 11:41 AM, Joey Hess wrote: Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent. So debian.mirror.my.org is illegal? Hmm, 'debian' is the default live hostname. That's a lot of potential infringements ... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/50194a9c.9010...@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 10:41:31AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
\item You can use DEBIAN trademarks to make true factual statements about
DEBIAN or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully.
Can I use DEBIAN trademarks to make snarky ill-supported statements?
(Anticipating a decrease in list traffic.)
(Fearing an increase in nitpicking threshold.) Well, you can, people
will, and I'm sure nobody will bother, on average. But I can imagine all
sorts of journalistic declarations about Debian that would undermine
the project reputation. If they are factual (or non-disprovable) fine,
if not this gives the project a edge to defend its reputation/identity.
This is what trademarks are about.
\item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name, with or without
commercial intent.
So debian.mirror.my.org is illegal?
I've been correct by Mako on this before. Short answer: hostname !=
domain name, so debian.mirror.my.org is perfectly fine. (No, I don't
have a clear definition for domain name to offer, but it is intended
here as the things that you register via a domain name registrar.)
For the record, this provision is already present in our _current_
trademark policy, quoting: « we insist that no business use the name
‘Debian’ in the name of […] a domain name ».
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 05:50:56PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: (Fearing an increase in nitpicking threshold.) Well, you can, people will, and I'm sure nobody will bother, on average. But I can imagine all sorts of journalistic declarations about Debian that would undermine the project reputation. If they are factual (or non-disprovable) fine, if not this gives the project a edge to defend its reputation/identity. This is what trademarks are about. Do I understand correctly? If a journalist says bad things about Debian, you want to use trademark law to shut them up? I think this is an abuse of the trademark system, regardless of whether the journalist is correct or not, or whether they lie or not. The purpose of the trademark system is to avoid consumers from being confused by competitors making products with similar names, but large differences. Or that's what it used to be, when I was young; these days it is a way to excercise control on people you don't like. The proper way to react to lies told about us is to respond with the correct information. Trademarks and software freedom mix badly. If I make a big change to Debian (replace eglibc with musl, or gcc with llvm), can I still call it Debian? We've struggled with that issue with Firefox, and we should not be inflicting the same pain onto others. I've been correct by Mako on this before. Short answer: hostname != domain name, so debian.mirror.my.org is perfectly fine. (No, I don't have a clear definition for domain name to offer, but it is intended here as the things that you register via a domain name registrar.) If you don't have a clear definition of what it means, then having it in the license is not acceptable, in my opinion. I don't think I want to participate in this discussion much, since the entire premise seems unacceptable to my value system. I'll leave the discussion with this counter suggestion: change the trademark policy to say: We call ourselves the Debian project. You can use our name as long as it doesn't make reasonable people confuse you or your stuff with us or our stuff, or imply that we're affiliated with or endorse you. You can use our logos under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (US) or later license. I don't expect this to be acceptable to the rest of the project, but I also don't want to let this trademark stuff happen without objecting. -- I wrote a book: http://gtdfh.branchable.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 05:10:41PM +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 05:50:56PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
(Fearing an increase in nitpicking threshold.) Well, you can, people
will, and I'm sure nobody will bother, on average. But I can imagine all
sorts of journalistic declarations about Debian that would undermine
the project reputation. If they are factual (or non-disprovable) fine,
if not this gives the project a edge to defend its reputation/identity.
This is what trademarks are about.
Do I understand correctly? If a journalist says bad things about Debian,
you want to use trademark law to shut them up?
No, I'm trying to explain why there are provisions like this one. But
I'm kind of man in the middle here and I can't say I like it. In fact, I
don't like it at all.
We've some trademarks, and that's a fact. We've been advised, via the
legal trademark owners (SPI), to set up a proper trademark policy for
it. Because without it: (1) it might turn out to be useless to have
them, and (2) we hand up over protecting on other sides (e.g. licensing
stuff like our own logo under non-free licensing). I'm trying to solve
this intertwined mess.
Also, I do have an interest in this, because it's ended up also on my
shoulder for the past years to deal with trademark stuff, including when
they're actually useful (e.g. in retrieving squatted domain names).
And the way I've chosen to do it is given a spec to SPI lawyers saying,
as free as possible (with only one exception, which I've clearly
marked as such). And I've posted here the result. It is possible that
some of not needed stuff has creeped in, of course, but it is unlikely.
To stay on the safe side: I'll double check by explicitly asking about
this provision and if it is a good idea or not to remove it (with a
rationale).
In the meantime, I'd appreciate if you can refrain from assuming that
it's me wanting to have specific provisions in the policy (modulo the
mentioned exception) and also from assuming I want to use them in
specific ways.
I've been correct by Mako on this before. Short answer: hostname !=
domain name, so debian.mirror.my.org is perfectly fine. (No, I don't
have a clear definition for domain name to offer, but it is intended
here as the things that you register via a domain name registrar.)
If you don't have a clear definition of what it means, then having it
in the license is not acceptable, in my opinion.
It is not a license. It is a policy. As such it is more fuzzy.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Lars Wirzenius l...@liw.fi writes: I'll leave the discussion with this counter suggestion: change the trademark policy to say: We call ourselves the Debian project. You can use our name as long as it doesn't make reasonable people confuse you or your stuff with us or our stuff, or imply that we're affiliated with or endorse you. You can use our logos under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (US) or later license. So, again, the reason why it doesn't read like this is because we got actual legal advice and the lawyers said that we can't make it read like that. We can choose to abandon our trademark and make it indefensible, but we should do that intentionally and not under an illusion that we're just creating a better usage policy. If we are going to maintain a defensible trademark, it's kind of important to listen to the lawyers who are telling us what kind of policy is required to keep our trademark defensible. The law is what it is, and if we want to use the law, we have to stay within the requirements of it, even when those requirements say things we don't want to say. The alternative is, effectively, to not have a trademark. All of this is well in line with the legal advice I've heard in other contexts about trademarks. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/874nom1rjo@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: trademark policy draft
On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 10:41:31AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
\item You can use DEBIAN trademarks to make true factual statements about
DEBIAN or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully.
Can I use DEBIAN trademarks to make snarky ill-supported statements?
Actually, I've realize only later an important overlook in my first
follow-up to this. This provision is positive, in the you can use our
trademarks to ... form. As such, it is just a public declaration that
we are with that kind of use. It does *not* follow from it that the
negation of that statement is forbidden.
Trademark law is full of gray areas by default. With trademark policies,
trademark owners provide their own interpretation of what is white, what
is black, and (by exclusion) what remains gray --- on which a judge, if
ever, will have to decide.
The correct answer to Joey is then related to what I've already
mentioned in reply to Paul. That provision, as all positive
provisions, simply tries to reduce the number of requests we get, with
which we agree by default.
I don't know why I overlooked this trivial fact at first, given that I
was in fact aware of. I've probably replied too much in a hurry (due to
a dial-up session that was about to end, but that's a different story…).
I'm sorry my reply spawned a slightly heated sub-thread. All in all,
rest assured that, even if future people in charge will want to, this
specific provision can't be used to implement the evil plan that has
been hypothesized.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: trademark policy draft
Stefano Zacchiroli scrisse: \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent. So debian.mirror.my.org is illegal? I've been correct by Mako on this before. Short answer: hostname != domain name, so debian.mirror.my.org is perfectly fine. (No, I don't have a clear definition for domain name to offer, but it is intended here as the things that you register via a domain name registrar.) IMHO it is already clear as it is, opposing a plain domain name to a fully qualified domain name, but maybe you may prefer an explanatory parenthesis as in: \item You cannot use DEBIAN trademarks in a domain name (ie. a second-level domain or equivalent), with or without commercial intent. Yet, this definition may pose additional issue with deeply nested public suffixes[0], so I'd suggest leaving it as in the original. Ciao, Luca [0] http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/dns/effective_tld_names.dat?raw=1 -- .''`. | ~[ Luca BRUNO ~ (kaeso) ]~ : :' : | Email: lucab (AT) debian.org ~ Debian Developer `. `'` | GPG Key ID: 0x3BFB9FB3 ~ Free Software supporter `-| HAM-radio callsign: IZ1WGT ~ Networking sorcerer signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: I'm happy to attach a first complete draft of such a policy, and I'm looking for comment on it. Some of the things that are explicitly allowed by the policy are things that AFAIK are not restricted by trademark law, is the purpose of including those to reduce the number of questions from people who aren't well informed about the restrictions in trademark law? The NeuroDebian project (and other Debian derivatives and sub-projects) has a logo that is modified from the Debian one, that would appear to not be allowed if we were to trademark the swirl logo. Also some derivatives also use a name that is similar to Debian, for example Debathena, Emdebian. http://neuro.debian.net/_static/fmri_w200.png http://pkg-games.alioth.debian.org/proposed-logo.png http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2011/07/11/debian-derivative-logos/ Does the domain name restriction mean that sites like these will have to rename themselves? http://www.debian-administration.org/ http://www.debian-news.net/ -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6hoovgzar3nszpi35nd4wxa8rm_zorzu4cdwv3rd2r...@mail.gmail.com
Re: trademark policy draft
[Paul Wise] Does the domain name restriction mean that sites like these will have to rename themselves? http://www.debian-administration.org/ http://www.debian-news.net/ The way I read it, it's not that sites like these will be forced to rename themselves, but that they will be forced to seek explicit permission to use the trademark. Peter -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120731195313.gb4...@p12n.org
Re: trademark policy draft
Stefano Zacchiroli lea...@debian.org writes:
\subsection{Guidelines for Using Logos}
\begin{itemize}
\item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo.
\item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors.
What's the reason for this? While the policy as I understand it is not
binding for Debian (we can use our own trademark as we like), it may
create some confusion that we as a project did not use the official
color on several occasions in our official artwork (eg. current wheezy
default desktop background). I don't see a reason why this should not be
allowed for others.
Gaudenz
--
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/877gtj7gis@meteor.durcheinandertal.bofh
Re: trademark policy draft
Gaudenz Steinlin gaud...@debian.org writes: Stefano Zacchiroli lea...@debian.org writes: \item Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo. \item Logo should only use ``official'' logo colors. What's the reason for this? It's standard legal advise for trademarks, at least in the US. If you don't require that the trademark be used in the same way all the time, it becomes *much* more difficult to legally protect the trademark. Stanford's lawyers tell us the same things all the time about use of Stanford's trademark symbols. That's for uses of the trademark by Stanford itself, so the advice is relevant to Debian-internal as well. Yes, if we misuse our own trademark, obviously there's no legal problem, but, as I understand it, it can put us in a situation where we can't defend the trademark any more. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/878vdzpp9g@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: trademark policy draft
Le Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 06:07:17PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit : - there is a potential exception to the as free as possible principle, though, in the following provision: You can also make merchandise with DEBIAN trademarks for commercial usage provided that, in addition to following the guidelines listed below, you truthfully advertise to customers which part of the selling price will be donated to the DEBIAN project. Hi Stefano, thank you for your work on this subject. In my opinion, we should give as few restrictions as possible, in the spirit of our Social Contract and the DFSG. In particular, we do not accept software with restrictions on commercial use. I think that we should show the example and remove restrictions on the commercial use of our trademark. We can of course, in a non-normative section, keep a recommendation to indicate if a donation will be made to Debian. Here are minor comments. - It would be nice to indicate somewhere which restrictions stem from laws, and which restrictions are additions by us. - If this policy focuses on trademarks owned by SPI, perhaps it can exhaustively list them ? - Is it necessary to capitalise DEBIAN in the document ? - Requests to not be misleading and be truthful are vague. - When one can use the Debian trademarks without asking, is it because of fair use, or is it because Debian grants a trademark license ? - Imagine that we in Debian follow the spirit of this policy when using other trademarks (GNOME, Linux, etc.) in our websites. Wouldn't the requriement of including a disclaimer be a bit heavy ? Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120731221051.gc16...@falafel.plessy.net
