On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
that's the entire point of having trademarks. Free software
projects are
obliged to allow you to access and modify their code. They are not
obliged to allow you to benefit from their reputation. It doesn't make
any sense to say 'I think this product needs to be modified but I wish
to be able to represent my modified product as being the same thing as
the original product in order to benefit from the reputation attached to
the original product'.
--
Trademarks defeat the purpose of it being "free software". They impose
restrictions. You have to remove MoFo's artwork and perform a name
change or you're required to get permission from Mozilla to
redistribute a modified binary. That's not free. At the same time does
that logically effect the produced binary if we don't use the Firefox
branding? I don't think the artwork and branding makes it any faster
or more standards compliant or compatible with plugins. It would
instantly remove the restrictions that make it unmaintainable.
Adam Williamson
Looks like RMS agrees too on the trademark issue.