1:50 p.m.
At the risk of stirring up a hornets' nest, I'd like to pose the
question to Red Hatters: what approach are you taking to trademarks?
Apparently, there is (was?) some discussion going on at debian-legal
regarding Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. At first glance, I
see that there are quite a few patches included in the firefox rpm in
FC3 and even more in rawhide and I'm wondering if Red Hat has filtered
this through its legal eagles, since it is still called Firefox.
More generally, what will the Fedora Project's (and possible, by
extension, RHEL's) handling of trademark issues be going forward if more
allegedly FOSS projects begin to assert trademarks.
For the Mozilla case, based on some of the excerpts I've read, they're
expectation is unreasonable: they want people to know they are using
Firefox and Thunderbird (by name), but they want to control what types
of changes are made to the software. To me, that's end-run around the
FOSS licenses which they have chosen.
Yes, I know some people will point out Red Hat's own trademark policy
regarding Fedora Core, but the difference I see is that Red Hat isn't
likely to make one whit of noise about derivate works of Fedora Core
that have been renamed. IMHO, The Mozilla Foundation seems to want
people to use the name, but at the cost of being the gatekeeper where it
comes to the types of changes that can be made.
Something tells me that FOSS projects that begin to take this path are
going to increasing face staunch resistance. They're going to have to
take Linus' liberal approach to the Linux trademark, or face there names
being scratched out where needed to comply with their own trademark
guidelines.
Let me close by saying that I do understand the desire (and need) to
protect trademarks, but it's inescapable that it conflicts with the
spirit of FOSS.
Thoughts?
--
-Paul Iadonisi
Senior System Administrator
Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux.
GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets
2:27 p.m.
pri.rhl3(a)iadonisi.to (Paul Iadonisi) writes:
At the risk of stirring up a hornets' nest, I'd like to
pose the
question to Red Hatters: what approach are you taking to trademarks?
Apparently, there is (was?) some discussion going on at debian-legal
regarding Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. At first glance, I
see that there are quite a few patches included in the firefox rpm in
FC3 and even more in rawhide and I'm wondering if Red Hat has filtered
this through its legal eagles, since it is still called Firefox.
ACK; I really doubt whether rawhide's firefox can be called 'Firefox'.
The applied patches lower quality and reputation of the Mozilla Firefox
product significantly (buttugly icons, removed functionality for upgrading
extensions with security leaks) so I do not see how the Mozilla Foundation
could accept this package as an official build or a "Community Edition";
it is definitively an "Iceweasel".
Enrico
3:13 p.m.
tsilims(a)gmail.com (m g) writes:
An "Iceweasel"?
There is a three level naming of the Mozilla Firefox product (see [1]
and [2] for more details):
1. The offical 'Firefox' name + the fox-on-earth logo
that must be approved by Mozilla Foundation and must contain minor
changes only (other bookmarks, other startup-page, official localized
builds).
2. The 'Firefox community edition'
can contain some more changes (e.g. another default theme, other default
settings (e.g. use-system-colors)).
3. "Iceweasel" level
Significant functional changes (e.g. removed extension-upgrade capability);
binary must not be called 'firefox' and the official artwork must not be
used anymore. The naming was created on the Debian legal list.
Enrico
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/distribution-policy.html
3:17 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 21:27 +0100, Enrico Scholz wrote:
pri.rhl3(a)iadonisi.to (Paul Iadonisi) writes:
> At the risk of stirring up a hornets' nest, I'd like to pose the
> question to Red Hatters: what approach are you taking to trademarks?
> Apparently, there is (was?) some discussion going on at debian-legal
> regarding Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. At first glance, I
> see that there are quite a few patches included in the firefox rpm in
> FC3 and even more in rawhide and I'm wondering if Red Hat has filtered
> this through its legal eagles, since it is still called Firefox.
ACK; I really doubt whether rawhide's firefox can be called 'Firefox'.
The applied patches lower quality and reputation of the Mozilla Firefox
product significantly (buttugly icons, removed functionality for upgrading
extensions with security leaks) so I do not see how the Mozilla Foundation
could accept this package as an official build or a "Community Edition";
it is definitively an "Iceweasel".
Chris Aillon is a girl!!!
2:50 p.m.
Paul Iadonisi wrote:
At the risk of stirring up a hornets' nest, I'd like to
pose the
question to Red Hatters: what approach are you taking to trademarks?
Apparently, there is (was?) some discussion going on at debian-legal
regarding Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.At first glance, I
see that there are quite a few patches included in the firefox rpm in
FC3 and even more in rawhide and I'm wondering if Red Hat has filtered
this through its legal eagles, since it is still called Firefox.
I have already replied to this issue (on this list) and noted that we
have an agreement with the Mozilla Foundation. Additionally, I have
requested permission from the Mozilla Foundation on potential problem
areas before patching them into our distribution as of recently. I have
not received word of any issue that the Mozilla Foundation has with our
officially released packages.
For the Mozilla case, based on some of the excerpts I've read,
they're
expectation is unreasonable: they want people to know they are using
Firefox and Thunderbird (by name), but they want to control what types
of changes are made to the software. To me, that's end-run around the
FOSS licenses which they have chosen.
Stop misrepresenting it. You are allowed to change whatever you want
without recourse. What the Mozilla Foundation is protecting is the name
"Firefox" and the respective art. They want to make sure that if you
are distributing "Firefox", you aren't selling an IE/NS4 clone.
For example, there have been occurences in the past with certain
distributors patching gecko which negatively altered the standards
compliance of the browser, after their patches had been rejected by
upstream. Note that it is completely valid for a distributor to do this
per the Mozilla Public License, however, when bug reports and news items
come back about certain versions of "Mozilla" being non-conformant to
standards it claims to support, that's bad PR and hurts Mozilla and,
indirectly open source.
Whether or not you agree with that, it does not dillute the fact that
the source code is out there and under an open source license (it can be
re-distributed as (L)GPL only if you wish) and you can make whatever
changes to it that you wish. If you are making substantive changes to
it already, what's the big deal about a minor change to its name and
artwork? It's obviously not the same software, no need to pretend it
is, though it should be attributed. The fact that you are even allowed
to see the source and modify and freely distribute such an integral
piece of software on the desktop is just awesome, IMO.
Also please note that in order to even get the "Firefox" name and
artwork built in if you are rolling your own build, you have to
knowingly turn it on with a few environment variables and configure flags.
3:08 p.m.
Actually on the subject of firefox patches - any idea why the Welsh translation
stuff seems to have just gotten stuck and despite being complete and all
paperwork done apparently forgotten.
3:21 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:50:12 -0500, Christopher Aillon
<caillon(a)redhat.com> wrote:
I have already replied to this issue (on this list) and noted that
we
have an agreement with the Mozilla Foundation. Additionally, I have
requested permission from the Mozilla Foundation on potential problem
areas before patching them into our distribution as of recently. I have
not received word of any issue that the Mozilla Foundation has with our
officially released packages.
My one question is how is the mozilla situation different from the
pine situation in practise.
I realize the licensing isn't the same, but my understanding is the
pine license allowed for patched versions to be distributed if the
name was changed to indicate that the distributed copy was not the
same as upstream.
What happens if you want to put in a patch into fedora that upstream
mozilla does not agree with? If you have to continue to get upstream
approval before every patch is applied, don't you run the risk of
disagreement which will necesitate renaming and replacing the icons?
Isn't this a potential maintence issue for Core? Disagreements do
happen. I have no problem with mozilla protecting its marks. But I
would prefer fedora to package mozilla using the iceweazel option and
not use mozilla's marks at all to forestall any abrupt branding change
required over disagreeable patches.
Also please note that in order to even get the "Firefox"
name and
artwork built in if you are rolling your own build, you have to
knowingly turn it on with a few environment variables and configure flags.
Are you talking about the upstream source or the fedora srpm here?
-jef
3:35 p.m.
On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 04:21:26PM -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
pine license allowed for patched versions to be distributed if the
name was changed to indicate that the distributed copy was not the
same as upstream.
And various other contortions were followed.
What happens if you want to put in a patch into fedora that upstream
mozilla does not agree with? If you have to continue to get upstream
We change the name. We did that with Apache (we ship "httpd"). And I'd note
we ask third parties to do the same if they revamp Fedora into something
else.
3:41 p.m.
Jeff Spaleta wrote:
What happens if you want to put in a patch into fedora that upstream
mozilla does not agree with? If you have to continue to get upstream
approval before every patch is applied, don't you run the risk of
disagreement which will necesitate renaming and replacing the icons?
Isn't this a potential maintence issue for Core? Disagreements do
happen. I have no problem with mozilla protecting its marks. But I
would prefer fedora to package mozilla using the iceweazel option and
not use mozilla's marks at all to forestall any abrupt branding change
required over disagreeable patches.
We want to stay as close to upstream as possible. I have been an
upstream developer before joining Red Hat, and continue pushing my
changes upstream. The icons patches are preparing to be landed upstream
(I've sort of let them languish a little because of holidays and RHEL
bugs I've been working on).
My thoughts in general on this are basically that one of the reasons we
are using "Firefox" is for the brand name recognition. Websites, ISVs,
etc. will say they work with Firefox, not Iceweasel, not Epiphany.
People complained ON THIS LIST because we were not using "Firefox" at
one point. Well, we are now. If we decide to drop "Firefox", it might
make more sense to switch back to Epiphany rather than Iceweasel, which
fits in stronger with GNOME and the desktop.
I'd like however to work together with the Mozilla Foundation rather
than against them. Obviously, they want us as a distributor and we want
to distribute their software.
>Also please note that in order to even get the "Firefox"
name and
>artwork built in if you are rolling your own build, you have to
>knowingly turn it on with a few environment variables and configure flags.
Are you talking about the upstream source or the fedora srpm here?
Upstream source.
4:10 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:41:09 -0500, Christopher Aillon
<caillon(a)redhat.com> wrote:
We want to stay as close to upstream as possible
Thats great... but you can do that using the iceweasel option. But
when there is a disagreement over a patch and there will be at some
point.... using the non-ioeweasel options will prevent Fedora Core
developers from being able to apply the patch without upstream
approval. This a maintence burden... and it will happen at some point.
If you have to keep getting approval for each patch you want to
apply.... you are bound to run into a situation where upstream
disagrees and you sit arguing about it for a month to keep the
branding agreement in place. "As close as possible" doesn't mean
upstream will approve of all the changes. Instead of burning that
disagreement bridge when we get to it... how about we avoid the
problem altogether and choose the iceweasel option because its the
most flexible.
I'd like however to work together with the Mozilla Foundation
rather
than against them. Obviously, they want us as a distributor and we want
to distribute their software.
Using the iceweasel option doesn't prevent you or any other fedora
developer from working with upstream as much as possible. But
disagreements do happen and I'd rather see fedora packaging things
free of trademark licensing requirements that impact the developers
ability to patch and maintain what is shipping inside Core, as much as
possible.
How much fun would it be if the linux kernel was packaged in a way
that demanded upstream approval of every patch before it was applied
to keep a branding agreement in place to prevent having to rename the
package and executables? That would be pretty unfun.
> Are you talking about the upstream source or the fedora srpm
here?
Upstream source.
Can you find a way to enforce the same sort of rebuilding policy for
the fedora srpm so that anyone rebuilding and patching the mozilla
srpm has to use 'magic' to get the trademark protected marks? Red Hat
has an agreement with mozilla, but downstream community members using
fedora's srpms do not. It seems inappropriate to hand fedora
community srpms that short-circuit the trademark protections that the
upstream source have built in to prevent people from casually
rebuilding a package that is infringing on mozilla's marks.
-jef"Red Hat shouldn't be relying on special relationship agreements
to produce patched versions of anything in fedora"spaleta
4:53 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 17:10 -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:41:09 -0500, Christopher Aillon
<caillon(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> We want to stay as close to upstream as possible
Thats great... but you can do that using the iceweasel option. But
when there is a disagreement over a patch and there will be at some
point.... using the non-ioeweasel options will prevent Fedora Core
developers from being able to apply the patch without upstream
approval. This a maintence burden... and it will happen at some point.
It already has happened, essentially. We (well, many of us, not
everyone) wanted to contribute a native widgets/HIG version of Firefox;
but upstream will not accept that patch under the Firefox name. So this
sort of argument has come up. Because they wouldn't take the patch we
decided to work on other stuff (including non-browser-related) and right
now everything we're doing with Firefox should land upstream. caillon
has it under control.
Changing the configure arguments in the packages and doing an
Obsoletes/Provides firefox wouldn't take very long, if we need to do it
someday. So there's no point stressing about hypotheticals. There's
value to calling it Firefox for now (if only to avoid user confusion)
and if we have to change it someday, it will cause some problems but
they'll be the same problems if we change it today.
Havoc
8:29 p.m.
Havoc Pennington wrote:
Changing the configure arguments in the packages and doing an
Obsoletes/Provides firefox wouldn't take very long, if we need to do it
someday. So there's no point stressing about hypotheticals. There's
value to calling it Firefox for now (if only to avoid user confusion)
and if we have to change it someday, it will cause some problems but
they'll be the same problems if we change it today.
It does indeed have value, for novice novice pc users like my mom, the
programs and icons on her desktop are the same at home (on FC3), as the
programs and icons at her work (WinXP). The programs are called the same
and works the same way (Open Office, Thunderbird & Firefox).
Having the same programs with different names & icons would only add
confusion.
Changing the names & icons at a "later" stage, would ofcouse add
confusion, but it might be easier to explain that its "just a
namechange" when she have adopted to using it.
Kris "wants a cool sig like Mr. Spaleta".
12:09 a.m.
On 01/10/2005 02:10:03 PM, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:41:09 -0500, Christopher Aillon
<caillon(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> We want to stay as close to upstream as possible
Thats great... but you can do that using the iceweasel option. But
when there is a disagreement over a patch and there will be at some
point.... using the non-ioeweasel options will prevent Fedora Core
developers from being able to apply the patch without upstream
approval. This a maintence burden... and it will happen at some
point.
If it happens and is not resolvable between the two parties, there are
ways within rpm to depricate a package and move on.
4:17 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 15:50 -0500, Christopher Aillon wrote:
Paul Iadonisi wrote:
[snip]
> For the Mozilla case, based on some of the excerpts I've
read, they're
> expectation is unreasonable: they want people to know they are using
> Firefox and Thunderbird (by name), but they want to control what types
> of changes are made to the software. To me, that's end-run around the
> FOSS licenses which they have chosen.
Stop misrepresenting it. You are allowed to change whatever you want
without recourse. What the Mozilla Foundation is protecting is the name
"Firefox" and the respective art. They want to make sure that if you
are distributing "Firefox", you aren't selling an IE/NS4 clone.
[snip]
changes to it that you wish. If you are making substantive changes
to
it already, what's the big deal about a minor change to its name and
artwork? It's obviously not the same software, no need to pretend it
is, though it should be attributed. The fact that you are even allowed
to see the source and modify and freely distribute such an integral
piece of software on the desktop is just awesome, IMO.
And I never implied it *wasn't* awesome. As far as misrepresenting
it, I don't believe I was, except for one matter that I wasn't aware of.
I wasn't aware that it was a *minor* change to change the name and the
artwork.
For example, though RHEL has specific trademark guidelines that only
require the modification of two rpms, Whitebox Enterprise Linux has gone
a lot further to be on the safe side. At one time, before Red Hat
became more assertive with its trademark policy (and before I read it),
I wondered how hard it would be to track down all the images that are
trademarked and replace them. How many packages would need changing? I
was relieved when I read the policy and found that only two packages
needed modification.
If it's simple to change the name of Mozilla products if need be (and
it looks like it won't be, for the foreseeable future, if ever), then
I'm satisfied.
Trademarks can cause a problem and potentially clash with the very
licenses that are used to cover software if it is not dead easy to make
the change to non-trademarked images and names. It appears that The
Mozilla Foundation has done just that. Kudos to them for that.
I brought up Mozilla because it's what's being discussed on debian-
legal (and subsequently, on lwn.net). My apologies for singling it out.
It was but one possible example of what could end up being a bigger
problem if every FOSS developer whose software is included in various
distributions starts asserting trademark controls.
I'm satisfied about the Mozilla (non-)issue, but I don't think I'm
alone in my concern about the possibility of many other FOSS developers
beginning to assert trademarks. My concern will go away if the trend is
for those same developers to make it easy to change (via a simple build
option) to a non-trademarked version.
Admittedly, it shouldn't be a huge issue for the majority of tools out
there because if they've been out there long enough, it's a little late
to try to enforce it now. Mozilla's products are relatively new in the
grand scheme of things, so that's not a problem they will likely have.
--
-Paul Iadonisi
Senior System Administrator
Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux.
GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets
5:58 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 14:50 -0500, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
For the Mozilla case, based on some of the excerpts I've read,
they're
expectation is unreasonable: they want people to know they are using
Firefox and Thunderbird (by name), but they want to control what types
of changes are made to the software. To me, that's end-run around the
FOSS licenses which they have chosen.
This is almost exactly like the qmail situation. DJB wants you to know
and use qmail, but you can't legally distribute any binaries or code
thats been modified with his expressed approval. I assume that if these
projects keep asserting their trademarks like this, they will face much
resistance and backlash from the community and people will just start
using some alternative.
Jack
6:25 p.m.
What exactly is modified about the Redhat/FF RPMs? I've been running
the standard Moz Foundation FF on Fedora since day 1, and never had
any issues. I can see wanting to change the start page, bookmarks,
etc., but that (according to a post upthread) is ok for the standard
"Official Firefox" level.
--
MG
6:44 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:58:59 -0500, Jack Aboutboul
<jaboutboul(a)speakeasy.net> wrote:
This is almost exactly like the qmail situation.
No there's a huge difference... you can't even rebrand qmail and
distributed modified versions. Mozilla is saying something else, they
are saying 'you are free to modify this.. but if you do.. remove the
trademark protected material when you modify' Qmail's restrictions
prevent you from distributing any modifications. Mozilla's policy
forces you to make certain modifications if you modify without
approval. Its apples and oranges.
Trademarks and copyright are very different things handled in the
legal system in very different ways. You have to be much more
diligent in proactively protecting a trademark in the US than you do
about protecting copyrights. Qmail's restrictions are completely and
utterly circumscribed by copyright. Mozilla's restrictions try to
limit themselves to aspects of trademark law without unduly burdening
the distribution and modification rights to the un-trademarked
codebase. I don't think i've seen a reasonably informed legal opinion
which says compelling someone to remove trademarked content when
modifying any software under an OSI approved copyright license, breaks
the copyright license conditions.
Whether or not mozilla's approach to protecting trademarks associated
with an open source project is the best model remains to be seen.
However, I don't think its wise to write-off trademarks and branding
completely as something open source projects cannot make use of as a
means of legal protection against people who would try to take
advantage of the projects efforts.
-jef
6:52 p.m.
Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:58:59 -0500, Jack Aboutboul
<jaboutboul(a)speakeasy.net> wrote:
> This is almost exactly like the qmail situation.
Mozilla is saying something else, they
are saying 'you are free to modify this.. but if you do.. remove the
trademark protected material when you modify'
Its more like: you are free to modify this. But if you don't, then you
are free to add our trademark protected material *which is not added by
default.*
7 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:52:40 -0500, Christopher Aillon
<caillon(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Its more like: you are free to modify this. But if you don't,
then you
are free to add our trademark protected material *which is not added by
default.*
indeed.
-jef"so more like apples versus twinkies then"spaleta
7043
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20 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Alan Cox -
Christopher Aillon -
Cream -
Enrico Scholz -
Havoc Pennington -
Jack Aboutboul -
Jef Spaleta -
m g -
Michael A. Peters -
Paul Iadonisi -
Seth Nickell