Re: Packaging the MeeGo stack on Debian (original) (raw)

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:26:02 -0600 Steve Langasek wrote:

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 04:16:46AM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: [...]

Unfortunately, there's no way that Debian can possibly comply with the compliance specification as written. [I only got as far as §2.3 to find an obvious deal-breaker.]

This sounds like yet another case where an unbranded name[1] is required for actual use in the community, ala iceweasel.

This situation is not analogous to the iceweasel case. For iceweasel, there was a copyright license on the graphics included in firefox that imposed trademark-like restrictions; so under the DFSG the graphics had to go, and the maintainer took the decision to also rename the package at the same time.

That's not how I recall the Mozilla trademark issues.

Quoting from http://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2006/msg00044.html :

[...] | Firefox becomes Iceweasel. Due to trademark [47]issues the Debian | project felt impelled to rename the Firefox web browser to Iceweasel | and the Thunderbird mail client to Icedove. Roberto Sanchez | [48]explained that the new packages don't contain non-free artwork | from the [49]Mozilla Foundation and that security updates will be | properly backported. The trademark [50]policy requires that such | packages are not distributed under the original name, hence the new | names. | | 47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00328.html | 48. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/10/msg00665.html | 49. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/ | 50. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html [...]

As far as I understand it, the issue was that the Mozilla Foundation wanted the Debian Project to distribute their "products" under their trademarked names, with their non-free graphical logos and only with selected patches approved by them (solution A). If these terms could not be complied with (and they were too restrictive for the Debian Project, obviously), then the graphical logos had to be removed, and the packages renamed (solution B).

The Debian Project, after a fairly long negotiation with the Mozilla Foundation, reached a compromise agreement, where the trademarked names could be used. But, after a while, the Mozilla Foundation seemed to change its mind and made it clear that there was no third alternative, beyond the above mentioned solutions A and B. The Debian Project chose solution B.

That being said, the rest of your reasoning may still hold.

But for Meego, there don't appear to be any such trademark-like copyright license provisions. [...]

-- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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