No trademarks in upstream source [LWN.net]

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 2, 2025 20:59 UTC (Sun) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: No trademarks in upstream source by pizza
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

The vast majority of FOSS licenses cover copyright. No more, no less (except for a minority which also include patent rights). You do not have the right to use the original trademarks unless a) the FOSS license explicitly includes them or b) there is a separate trademark license covering them.

The fact that this is inconvenient to you is, as far as the law is concerned, entirely your problem to solve.

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No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 3, 2025 7:08 UTC (Mon) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (1 responses)

Further to this comment about trademarks, trademarks are not the only issue: there is the question of 'trade dress'. Unlike many packaging formats, Flatpak typically displays much of the trade dress used by the project. This was the essential point for OBS: the two Flatpaks were dressed so similarly that people were confusing the genuine product and the copy (a copyright-permitted copy, but a copy all the same). Fedora could perhaps make the trade dress of its own Flatpaks different enough to avoid this issue re-occuring.

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 3, 2025 9:52 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

How many people remember (or know) the story of NCR in the Wild West days. How they regularly assumed the "trade dress" of their competition, sold shitty imitations, and destroyed other companies' reputations (and the companies with it).

Do we really want to go back to those days, and give the enemies of FLOSS a free reign to trash our reputations?

Even if we don't know about NCR, I'm sure we know all about the Windows stores that wrapped FLOSS programs in a malware or PUP containing installer, and did lots of damage. I think we've managed to stamp that out - do you really want to go back to those days?

Cheers,
Wol

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 12:45 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (5 responses)

What about trademark reference included in API/ABI ?

But fundamentaly, if the trademark make it too onerous to modify the software, we still have option to declare the software non-free. This is not a legal determination.

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 13:36 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

> What about trademark reference included in API/ABI ?

> But fundamentaly, if the trademark make it too onerous to modify the software, we still have option to declare the software non-free. This is not a legal determination.

Your problem, then, is that you are unable to copy the software without breaking the GPL !!!

I think it was Nintendo? - lost a lawsuit over "unremovable trademarks" probably thirty years ago. If removing the trademark breaks the software, then the trademark is "essential to the operation" and loses its protection.

But why is everybody so obsessed with defrauding their own downstream? Why is everybody so obsessed (in the name of freedom) with violating the GPL?

The GPL itself requires you - unless it's a verbatim copy! - to *prominently* *mark* *it* *as* *your* *own* *version*. This is the problem with Fedora - their own users simply had no idea it was not the genuine upstream article. That's a GPL violation!

The threat of trademarks is simply a way of enforcing the GPL - "If you don't add your own marks, you have to remove mine". That's not a demand to remove marks - it's a demand that you follow your GPL obligations!

Cheers,
Wol

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 14:48 UTC (Tue) by draco (subscriber, #1792) [Link] (1 responses)

> The GPL itself requires you - unless it's a verbatim copy! - to *prominently* *mark* *it* *as* *your* *own* *version*.

Wol, please cite the exact license text (and context/location in the license)

The only things I find in GPLv3, GPLv2, & LGPLv2.1 are:
* In the preamble, it says modified versions should be clearly identified so the original author isn't besmirched. It then says the exact terms are specified later, so while there's an intent there, it's not (as I read it) the binding text
* Later it says that the *sources* must be marked as modified and when (but not how)
* License must be clearly marked
* Original source must be clearly marked if in a combined work
* GPLv3 does allow you to add licence terms to strengthen this further, but it's not the default.

There is nothing about "must mark the resulting version as your own"—just that it must be clear what the license is (so they know they can request source) and then that source must make the modification clear.

I dunno about flatpaks, but assuming there's some way to track them back to their sources/build recipes, then it should be clear they're based on the RPM.

RPM versions inherently identify themselves as distinct from the upstream version (due to the RPM release version added) so that format plus its storage in Git by the Fedora project addresses all the license terms of use (or should).

I didn't read the terms exhaustively, so if I missed something, please point it out.

You've also filed a bug, I assume? From what I've seen, the project takes licensing extremely seriously (they've done intensive license audits, catching numerous violations and defective licenses that other distributions missed)

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 19:44 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Thanks to NYKevin for this, but ...

> 5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.

>You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

> a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.

> 7. Additional Terms.

> c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version; or

Hmm ... so it sounds like misrepresenting the origin isn't *automatically* a GPL violation, but it's certainly acceptable for it to be one.

Cheers,
Wol

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 18:10 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

> But why is everybody so obsessed with defrauding their own downstream? Why is everybody so obsessed (in the name of freedom) with violating the GPL?

Quite the contrary. I do not want to defraud anyone. If upstream does not want that I distribute modified versions, I will not do it. But then I will not consider the software FOSS. That is as simple as that.

No trademarks in upstream source

Posted Mar 4, 2025 19:50 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Quite the contrary. I do not want to defraud anyone.

So why don't you care that *your* *downstream* has no idea of the true origin of the software in question? It's morally indefensible (and quite likely illegal) to misrepresent someone else's software as your own; so why do you consider it perfectly acceptable to misrepresent your software as someone else's? That's what I mean about defrauding your own downstream.

(And that's why trademarks got dragged into this, that is exactly what trademarks are for.)

Cheers,
Wol