Whoops...

Whoops...

Posted Nov 13, 2004 23:18 UTC (Sat) by pimlott (subscriber, #1535)
In reply to: Whoops... by branden
Parent article: Trademarks: A threat to free software's freedom? (NewsForge)

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.

---

(Log in to post comments)