Re: Debian's trademarks and logos, and their terms of use.
Charles Plessy writes: > In contrast with what we require for the software we distribute, we are > forbidding to use some of our logos for profit. While there are some clear > differences between software and carriers of visual identity, I feel that > there > is a strong mismatch between what we ask and what we give, if we reduce a > software on one side, and Debian's reputation on the other side, to the fruit > of the efforts of their makers. Said differently, I see a contradiction > between forbidding people making money by printing our name on T-shirts, and > requiring that all the software we distribute can be used for profit. There is a huge difference between copyright and trademark. While I like to see my software under a free license, I would not neccessarily want my name to be used by or associated with some of the places where they are used. > I would like to know your position or vision on our trademarks and logos, and, > if you indend to work on that question as a DPL, what would be the key points > of your action. I think all three of us have a similar position, and vision. Allow me to not echo back what Stefano and Wouter have written already: Stefano explained it well what steps we should take, and what work is already being done to update Debian's trademark policy, and Wouter also expressed his concerns, and the dangers of a policy too weak. If elected, I'd ask Stefano to supervise the work he started, and bring it to completion. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87obrc1jyi@luthien.mhp
Re: Debian's trademarks and logos, and their terms of use.
On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 09:47:27AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: [...] > I would like to know your position or vision on our trademarks and logos, and, > if you indend to work on that question as a DPL, what would be the key points > of your action. Stefano has already given an overview of the current state of things. It's interesting that some work has been done in this area, and if elected, I do intend to see this through. From Stefano's mail, it looks like there's a good chance that we'll be able to change our trademark policy to be less restrictive, which can only be a good thing. As to my personal preference on the matter: On the one hand, I think that whatever trademark policy we have or end up with should be consistent with what we require from upstreams. For instance, we currently do not ship mozilla products under their original name, because we find their trademark policy too restrictive. We should make sure that our own trademark policy would not be rejected by a hypothetical downstream distribution with trademark policies similar to our own. For the record, I'm not sure whether or not our current trademark policy passes or fails that test. On the other hand, I think it's important to remember that trademark law and copyright law are two very different matters. The right to modify software so it fits your own goal is core to what free software is about; but the right to misrepresent others is not. A trademark policy that is too liberal could allow people to take a piece of software, make it do something extremely evil (like, say, install a password logger by default that sends all passwords to some evil overlords on the far side of the moon) and say "This is an unmodified Debian installation disk". While I don't expect this to happen every other day, fighting this kind of thing is exactly why trademark law was invented. If we lose our trademark, then anyone can call anything "Debian" and we wouldn't be able to tell them to stop. So while I agree that perhaps a somewhat less restrictive trademark policy may be in order, we should make sure we do not make our trademark policy so liberal that we may lose control over it; and if that means we have to make it more difficult for people to do some things in ways we would rather not require of them, then I think doing that is the lesser of the two evils. -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian's trademarks and logos, and their terms of use.
On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 09:47:27AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> In contrast with what we require for the software we distribute, we are
> forbidding to use some of our logos for profit. While there are some clear
> differences between software and carriers of visual identity, I feel that
> there
> is a strong mismatch between what we ask and what we give, if we reduce a
> software on one side, and Debian's reputation on the other side, to the fruit
> of the efforts of their makers. Said differently, I see a contradiction
> between forbidding people making money by printing our name on T-shirts, and
> requiring that all the software we distribute can be used for profit.
I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I think most of us agree with that and
side comments in the (not so) recent threads about how to deal with
trademarks in the archive [1] seem to confirm that impression.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/02/msg00073.html
> I would like to know your position or vision on our trademarks and logos, and,
> if you indend to work on that question as a DPL, what would be the key points
> of your action.
Historically, the reason for having a restrictive copyright license was
related to the fear of losing the Debian trademark (note: a registered
trademark on the DEBIAN *name*, the Debian logo is not a registered
trademark) due to an excessively liberal license.
I've worked on this, with the help of SFLC and of other FOSS projects or
foundations who have had to face similar issues in the past (e.g. GNOME,
and Software Freedom Conservancy on a related issue). It is now clear to
me that there is no reason we couldn't have a DFSG-compatible license on
our logo.
However, to do thing properly, I need we should follow the following
chain of events / decisions:
a. Decide our position on the acceptability of trademark restrictions
(of various kinds) in the archive *and document it*: in the past we
have took decisions on a case by case basis, without coming to a
general project position on the matter (also, I've been asked by
ftp-master to help on this matter [2] and gladly accepted).
Work on this point has been going on; a recent summary is at [3].
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/07/msg00031.html
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/02/msg00073.html
b. Update our trademark policy [4]. The one we have now is quite vague
and discourage usage of the Debian name more than needed, as observed
by people who has worked on revamping it in the past [5].
I've worked on a draft of a new trademark policy, with the
substantial help of Benjamin Mako Hill and of SFLC. I haven't yet
submitted it to the Project for discussion yet just due to lack of
time --- and possibly a minor desire to complete (b) first. I hope to
be able to do that before the end of the term. Admittedly, this is
one of the long running tasks that will likely overflow this term and
that I'd like to have a change to supervise and bring to completion
in the next one, if elected.
[4] http://www.debian.org/trademark
[5] http://wiki.mako.cc/TrademarkFreedom
c. Re-license Debian logos under a DFSG-free license.
This is trivial to do, we should just ask SPI to do so, but I see (b)
as a precondition for this.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences .. http://upsilon.cc/zack .. . . o
Debian Project Leader... @zack on identi.ca ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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Debian's trademarks and logos, and their terms of use.
Dear Wouter, Gergely and Stefano, one of the conditions for a work to be considered free is to allow others to use it without making contribution back to the original authors (even if we whish everybody would do when they can). In the non-free section of our archive, we therefore have software where the authors reserve commercial use for themselves. In contrast with what we require for the software we distribute, we are forbidding to use some of our logos for profit. While there are some clear differences between software and carriers of visual identity, I feel that there is a strong mismatch between what we ask and what we give, if we reduce a software on one side, and Debian's reputation on the other side, to the fruit of the efforts of their makers. Said differently, I see a contradiction between forbidding people making money by printing our name on T-shirts, and requiring that all the software we distribute can be used for profit. I would like to know your position or vision on our trademarks and logos, and, if you indend to work on that question as a DPL, what would be the key points of your action. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120314004701.ga29...@falafel.plessy.net
