[Mageia-dev] Seamonkey package

[nicolas vigier]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2011, Michael Scherer wrote:

> Le vendredi 18 mars 2011 à 01:00 +0100, nicolas vigier a écrit :
> > On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Michael Scherer wrote:
> > 
> > > Le jeudi 17 mars 2011 à 18:24 -0400, andre999 a écrit :
> > > > nicolas vigier a écrit :
> > > 
> > > > > Also the "do not charge for it" would make it non free (but it does not
> > > > > seem to be mentioned in the "Modifications" section, only in the
> > > > > "Unaltered Binaries" section).
> > > > 
> > > > Why would "do not charge for it" make it non-free ?
> > > > That doesn't seem to be a requirement of open source.  Although charging 
> > > > for it is generally permitted in unmodified open source licenses.
> > > 
> > > So that mean that someone cannot ask money for selling a cdrom with it,
> > > since it would be charging for the software. 
> > > 
> > > That's clearly a restriction of usage. So we need to rebrand it.
> > 
> > It seems this restriction only applies to "Unaltered Binaries"
> > distribution.
> 
> Yup, but then for altered binaries, we just cannot use the brand, see
> "modification" :
> 
> "If you're taking full advantage of the open-source nature of Mozilla's
> products and making significant functional changes, you may not
> redistribute the fruits of your labor under any Mozilla trademark,
> without Mozilla's prior written consent."
> 
> I do understand their position, and I also know that they need to defend
> their trademark ( as not doing would prevent them from defending later,
> as some lawyer explained to me one day ), so I do not blame them.
> 
> But if we wish to respect their policy ( and that's what we both wish ),
> we will likely need to change the name, or to move it to tainted or
> non-free ( because either trademark issues preventing distribution or
> removal of a basic freedom would be a reason to do so ).

Or get permission to use their trademark with our modified version. I
think that's what most distributions do, and that they give permission
easily if modifications are small.

I don't think protected trademark is a reason to move to non-free or
tainted, as software is still free software and can be modified without
asking permission if name is also changed. Other software we have in
core also have the same requirements. Apache is a registered trademark,
and can only be used by software from the apache foundation, so cannot
be forked without changing name :
http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/
OpenJDK is also a trademark, that can be used only if "the vast majority
of the Software code is identical to the upstream Website Software" :
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-trademark-notice.html
Eclipse is also a registered trademark, and can only be used by eclipse
projects :
http://www.eclipse.org/legal/logo_guidelines.php
And I think many other software names or logo are registered trademarks,
or have a license that require changing name when making important changes.