Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use [LWN.net]

The Mozilla Foundation has posted a copy of a letter it is sending to vendors selling Mozilla-oriented merchandise. The Foundation, it seems, is serious about its trademarks and won't let just anybody make use of them. "The Mozilla project uses Mozilla, Firefox, the fox-on-the-globe and other names and logos to brand its products and goods. We like to think that it's a mark of quality.... We'd like to be certain that what's being sold with our logos on is the good stuff. And (let's be honest here) it's only fair that we get a cut, to contribute towards keeping the Foundation going."

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Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 17, 2004 22:30 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Slashdot being basically useless, the prevailing opinion there should be taken for what value it has: none. :-)

Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 18, 2004 8:37 UTC (Thu) by chant (subscriber, #20286) [Link]

I'm not sure of the details of the Mozilla Public License, but for the GPL I know you can sell a GPLd to someone else, and the original author doesn't get a cut, and I believe that is still fair, as do a whole bunch of other OSS
authors.

Does the MPL allow you to 'sell' Mozilla in the same way that you can with the GPL? If so, couldn't these T-Shirts and such be considered derivative works? Granted, taking software, deleting all the files except for a logo and putting it on a T-Shirt or mug is a pretty bizarre derivative, but I think it's still a valid one.

The main thing is the spirit of this whole thing. If you were going to buy Mozilla-branded stuff, don't you think you'd buy it from the Mozilla shop anyways? All this seems to do is stop LUGs and fun people doing events from mass-printing t-shirts and such that could be helpful to the Mozilla effort, or at the very least fun.

If other people are profiting without benefitting the developers, thats too bad, but not the end of the world. Certainly not worth the loss of freedom it provides to others, in my opinion.

-Andrew Chant

Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 18, 2004 13:38 UTC (Thu) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]

> Does the MPL allow you to 'sell' Mozilla in the same way that you can with
> the GPL?

The MPL allows you to license binaries differently from the source - but I'm not sure what relevance that has to the discussion.

> If so, couldn't these T-Shirts and such be considered derivative works?

The logos are not under the MPL or GPL, so this suggestion doesn't work.

> All this seems to do is stop LUGs and fun people doing events from
> mass-printing t-shirts and such

No, it doesn't. All it means is that they have to check with us first. :-)

Gerv

Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:42 UTC (Thu) by freethinker (guest, #4397) [Link]

Let me see...

You can't sell it without their permission.

They want a cut of your revenues.

You probably can't sell it at all, where that would compete with their store.

Is this what we think of, when we think of "open source"?

Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 19, 2004 10:24 UTC (Fri) by jdesbonnet (guest, #2771) [Link]

This is the Mozilla brand, not the code we are talking about here. I see nothing wrong with what they are doing. Linus has been known to enforce the Linux trademark also.

It is also my understanding that if you fail to enforce a trademark you loose your rights to
it.

Mozilla Foundation open letter on trademark use

Posted Mar 20, 2004 3:47 UTC (Sat) by freethinker (guest, #4397) [Link]

My concern is with the tone of the letter. The Mozilla Foundation has trademarked certain names, and they are enforcing those trademarks, which they must do or risk losing them. All ok so far.

But, reading this letter, I get the definite impression that they are going to license those trademarks rather less freely than, say, Linus Torvalds licenses the "Linux" name. The part about reserving the North American market for their own store is particularly troubling.

"Enforcing" is an elastic term. If, having set this policy, Mozilla failed to enforce it, they could lose the trademarks. But if they were to set a more liberal policy, that would not constitute failure to enforce the trademarks; it would merely constitute more liberal licensing of the trademarks. So the "enforce it or lose it" issue is not really relevant. They could have chosen to license liberally. Instead they seem to have chosen to license restrictively.

The Mozilla Foundation is within their rights in doing so, since they are restricting trademarks, not code. But this kind of exclusion, though within the letter, is certainly not in the spirit of the Open Source Definition or the Free Software Definition. Those who care about freedom should consider whether such practices promote or harm it.