Whoops... [LWN.net]

Whoops...

Posted Nov 6, 2004 15:44 UTC (Sat) by branden (guest, #7029)
In reply to: Whoops... by JoeBuck
Parent article: Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

The problem, Joe, is that that restriction seems to be in force, *and*
Debian has modified its version of AbiWord, *and* Debian hasn't renamed
it.

Debian therefore appears to be in violation of AbiWord's trademark
license. Except the only trademark license that's publicly available has
been superseded according to the current mark holder. Except that what
it's been superseded by doesn't exist.

It's a very confusing situation. If the trademark license page at
AbiWord's site is out of date and doesn't reflect the wishes of the mark
holder, I don't understand why they don't take it down.

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Whoops...

Posted Nov 6, 2004 15:55 UTC (Sat) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Just to connect a few more dots for people...

Dom Lachowitz sent Debian an email with a sort of trademark license that
would permit Debian to distribute its modified version of AbiWord, except
there are two caveats: 1) Dom said it wasn't a license per se, and 2) it's
Debian-specific. For those who haven't reviewed the DFSG or Open Source
Definition lately, licenses that are specific to a licensee cannot be
Free.

If Dom is right that everything Debian and other Linux distributors do
falls under the "trademark fair use" umbrella, then he's right that Debian
doesn't need a trademark license. If he's wrong, though, then Debian
still has a problem -- it needs to either get a DFSG-free trademark
license, or rename the software.

Whoops...

Posted Nov 13, 2004 23:18 UTC (Sat) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

2) it's Debian-specific. For those who haven't reviewed the DFSG or Open Source Definition lately, licenses that are specific to a licensee cannot be Free.

I thought about this, and I'm not sure it's a problem. Everyone agrees that abiword is free software even without the trademark licence, because you have the necessary freedoms as long as you change the name (and other trademarked items). So a Debian-specific trademark licence wouldn't make the difference between it being free and non-free, it would just give a bit of extra benefit to Debian. I don't see anything wrong with that, unless you interpret the Debian-specific prohibition very strictly.

The situation is difficult if you acknowledge the concern of Abiword over their brand. It would probably be impossible for them to prescribe exactly what changes you could make and still carry the Abiword trademark; yet they want to be recognized in any modification that retains its "integrity". So the best solution for them is to authorize distributors, like Debian, whom they trust, to use the trademark. It seems a reasonable approach to me.