Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 11th Oct 2006 14:46 UTC, submitted by brewin
As previously reported, Debian plans to release its newest version, Etch, in December, and wants Mozilla's Firefox Web browser to be part of the distribution. Mozilla, however, told Debian it couldn't release the software without its accompanying artwork. Now a legal expert says that the existing distinctions between copyright and trademark laws should have prevented this from becoming an issue in the first place. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols also discusses the issue.
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Member since:
2006-03-14
Remember XFree86? The changes in the 4.4 license upset enough people that many distros switched to X.Org.
http://pcburn.com/article.php?sid=203
"Which states that you now need to include a statement about the origins of XFree86 *and* a copyright notice in any derivative works."
So the nature of open source gives us options and alternatives. Maybe the Debian people are right in avoiding trademarks and branding issues. Case in point: the KIllustrator maintainer was sued because some law firm thought the name hurts Adobe's Illustrator product's image or some such.
If Debian can legally re-brand the Firefox codebase to meet their social contract, fine, let them do it. Lest they get sued for improperly using someone else's brand.