Re: [gNewSense-users] GLPv2 - License trademark

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Apr  2, 2008, Luis Alberto Guzmán García <address@hidden> wrote:

>    ALL LIABILITY, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENTS, 
>    COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS, RELATING TO USE OF THIS 
>    SOFTWARE IS DISCLAIMED.

> This is free software even with this last paragraph right?
> Just to make sure.

I'll comment on trademarks, since that's what the subject is about.

It would be very hard to use trademark law to render Software
non-Free.  Trademark law enables a party to stop others from offering
products using a trademark held by the party.  Adding trademarks to
software may enable people identify the origin of a package, but, if
there's freedom to modify and distribute the software, even if the
trademark is not licensed, it is generally not too hard to locate and
replace any uses of the trademarks that might be objectionable.

It may theoretically be possible to make the software so dependent on
trademarks, logos, etc, that it becomes nearly impossible (e.g. way
too difficult or costly) to distribute modified versions of the
software.  In this rare case, you might find that the trademarks along
with the technical measures taken to make it difficult to replace them
render the Software non-Free.

But in most other cases, trademarks not licensed for modified versions
are little more than a nuisance.  But it can be quite a nuisance,
indeed: if I wanted to distribute a 100% version of say Fedora,
replacing its kernel with linux-libre (and removing some out-of-kernel
non-Free firmwares and a few other bits), I'd have a whole lot of work
in my hands to replace the Fedora artwork, to turn fedora into say
freed ora ;-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  address@hidden, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   address@hidden, gcc.gnu.org}