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Debian Questions Trademark Policy
An anonymous reader writes "The OSS/developer community at large is paying more attention to the trademark issue, especially since Linus Torvalds bid to trademark the name 'Linux' in Australia failed recently. Branden Robinson, Debian's project leader, says the current trademark policy needs updating to ensure it has the appropriate level of protection against legal challenges. Robinson said there are various questions that project members must address when deciding how to change the policy. These include whether Debian Linux should have a trademark at all, and whether the trademark can be used to penalize those who 'prey upon' the community."
The logo these guys (still) have elektrostore.se
some debian-legal discussion
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
You are confused. trademark is a monopoly claimed over the usage of a label (eg - the name "Debian") so that people can't pretend to be you or otherwise create confusion or damage your reputation.
Here's Project Leader Branden's Robinson's full (much longer) comments on the trademark issue.
His main point seems to be that trademarks can lead to forking, whether it be forced by the trademark holder or voluntary, and that these trademark forks can lead to confusion (Why are these forked version unofficial? Is it really the same product? Which is the 'best' version?), inefficiency (harder to share code between forks) and fragmentation of the open-source community. Moreover, the implicit threat of trademarks - play by our rules or lose the name - seems at odds with the ethos of freedom to make changes that at the core of the free software movement.
He ends with three main questions that Debian will have to resolve:
* Why even have a trademark? What protections does it give that are useful for Debian? How do these protections different internationally, within dozens of different national jurisdictions?
* What is the approval process for using the Debian trademark? Should some groups get automatic approval, or should Debian leverage its trademark to compel vendors to contact Debian?
* Can we apply the Copyleft principle to trademark? That is, how can we turn trademark on its head and make it a tool to promote the open and free use of Debian and other projects instead of a device to restrict the rights of others?
Debian already has a trademark. In the US, it's held by Software in the Public Interest on behalf of Debian. Every page on the Debian website states this in the footer.
Seriously, I think that the term Linux has been in use so long that it has become a fairly generic term. While protection of the name may be somewhat important, the fact that it is in use and fairly generic would prevent others from trademarking it, where it isn't trademarked (or should at least).
With due respect, you clearly don't have the faintest clue what "generic" means.
Generic is when you use something that might be a trademark to refer to anything vaguely similar. For example, in Britain it's common to use the word "hoover" to refer to a vacuum cleaner of any brand: you have Hoover hoovers and Dyson hoovers. What that means is that "hoover" is becoming generic, and soon it might get to the point where Dyson could actually describe what they were making as hoovers, and Hoover wouldn't be able to sue them for it.
Likewise, Xerox have had to go to tremendous efforts to protect their trademark: if you stopped talking about copiers and started talking about xeroxes (of any brand), then the Xerox mark would have become generic. But we don't, we talk about copiers: so Xerox is not generic these days.
Now, is Linux generic? Of course it isn't! When you talk about Linux, you are talking about an operating system based on the Linux kernel. You wouldn't say "Microsoft Windows is a popular linux", or talk about the "FreeBSD linux", or say "OS X is based on the Mach micro-linux", because the generic term is "operating system" or "kernel", and "Linux" is the unique name for a particular kernel used to power a particular set of operating systems.
Sorry, but the Australians called it wrong this time. There may well be valid arguments against a Linux trademark, but genericity ain't one of them.