Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions (original) (raw)

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Alexander Sack wrote:

Hi,

mozilla wants us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in order to not infringe their trademarks.

So what do they basically want? They basically want us to comply to the community editions terms as described in [1]. This implies that we do not use any term that reads: "Mozilla Thunderbird". Neither in the package-name nor in the application itself.

They may think this, but what we actually need to do is not miscontrue our package as being the official mozilla thunderbird. We should be able to say: "Debian Lightningbug -- based on Mozilla Thunderbird(tm)."

Ideally, they would explicitly allow unofficial builds to use the name so long as they conspicuously identified them as such. But if they are unwilling to allow that, we should try to communicate with slackware and the other distributions and select a common unnoficial name.

See Nathaniel Nerode's message[1] for more on this subject.

Another IMHO more important point is, that we need (they want us) to add a statement to the thunderbird copyright file like:

If they actually have this statement in their license, it's appropriate to add it. Otherwise, it's just uncessary junk. Stick it in a README.Debian or similar if you really must include it.

So my question ... Is thunderbird still free and suitable for main with these restrictions?

If not, the only option left would be the iceweasel way mentioned in [1].

I'm not sure if you want to limit yourself to the types of modifications that the "community" trademark license gives you, especially as there were undoubtedly be security related issues discovered in thunderbird that will require real modification not allowed by the community trademark license.

I personally would suggest the lightningbug nee iceweasel method.

Don Armstrong

1: http://people.debian.org/~terpstra/message/20040228.014134.ef226d15.en.html

-- There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance. -- William's Law

http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu

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