On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 3:06 PM, inode0 <inode0@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Could it too be abused in unpleasant ways? Yes. Could our distribution > be abused in unpleasant ways? Yes. With freedom comes risk. A bit glib...and way way out of touch with what we actually do as a distribution. A large part of the distribution is licensed under terms which mitigate certain risks of abuse. We aren't BSD. We don't just chuck an entire distribution over the wall nearly limitation free and hope people don't abuse it. There are very important bits of the distribution that come with very strong legal protections in their copyright licensing terms which can be used to combat misuse if the copyright owners of that work choose to use them. Now copyright is not trademark, so we can't just slap the GPL on our logo and call it a day...but the desire and need to protect against trademark misuse is there none-the-less. You may not believe in trademark or brand identity as a valuable thing to protect. That's fine. Some people don't think copyright is a valuable thing either and don't ascribe to the ideals that copyleft, which attempt to use legal protections inherent in copyright to protect freedoms to access to code. Such people will most likely just slap BSD on their code and drop it over the wall. I'm pretty sure we aren't, by and large, that sort of people. I'm pretty sure we are a copyleft tribe who are willing to use legal tools to provide protections...not a "I sure hope people don't abuse are stuff" tribe. The way forward for us is not to strip out _all_ trademark protections but to figure out a trademark policy that does a better job at balancing protections with use than the one we have now. A trademark policy that offers no protection, is most likely a non-starter. -jef _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
