Matt Domsch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 11:55:34AM -0500, Douglas McClendon wrote:
Can trademark guidelines on free software restrict the ability to
redistribuite bit-for-bit copies of the software, that don't use the
trademarks in any other way than the fact that they are included in
those bits?
yes, they can, which is why one of the feature of Fedora 8 is to clean
up the fedora-logos and redhat-artwork packages, and the addition of
the generic-logos package, exactly so one can create a derivative of
Fedora using and containing only Free Software, easily, without including
the Fedora trademarks.
Certainly for derivatives and any other modification, it seems obvious
that trademarks are protected. My question rather involved bundling an
unmodified copy of free software with other (free and/or non-free) software.
My not-a-lawyer hunch is that the nature of free software suggests that
it may be redistributed unmodified in any and all manner. But a hunch
is hardly anything to go by.
My scenario involved supplying the end-user with software that makes it
dirt-simple (i.e. a bootloader choice) for the end-user to apply
patches. This is somewhat similar to the ideas I have heard kicked
around regarding supplying kernel modules as source along with scripts
that make it as simple for the end-user to turn the source into the
binary, which for obscure legal reasons could not be distributed as a
binary.
-dmc
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