Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

Posted Nov 6, 2004 19:34 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
Parent article: Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

GNU GPL section 7. say
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
may not distribute the Program at all."

The words 'for any other reason' seems to cover trademark as well.

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Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

Posted Nov 9, 2004 16:51 UTC (Tue) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

You can always go out of the way of trademark bombs by renaming the
software. So you can distribute it. You just have to think about a new
name. Is that a real limitation? I don't think so.

TeX mandates it, where TeX has two parts: the architecture-independent
ones, and the patches to make it run; the patches can change as needed.
The artistic license AFAIK also mandates a rename of a modified version.
Rename means anything that's different, i.e. pdftex clearly shows that
this is not Don Knuth's TeX. From a trademark point of view, pdftex could
be a violation.

Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

Posted Nov 11, 2004 14:12 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

No, pdftex (and e-TeX and ML-TeX and ...) is especially the right way to handle the TeX trademark. If one changes TeX in a way that goes beyond environment adaptions (and those allowed places are marked explicitely in the source), then one has to rename TeX. Putting a prefix in front of "TeX" is a valid way to do that, that was both cleared with AMS (the trademark holder) and DEK (as author). I have personally been in discussions with DEK on that topic, this is no second hand information.

In fact, from the TeX Users' Groups point of view, naming modified systems by prefixing "TeX" is the best way to do it. It shows that one still is `connected' to the TeX community.

Joachim
(active TeXie since more than 20 years, DANTE founding member)