Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Debian Questions Trademark Policy

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the precautionary-measures dept.

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."

4 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Has it happened yet? by Crixus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Have ANY of these important linux questions been answered in a court yet? i.e. How enforcable is the GPL, and IS "linux" a trademark?

    --
    Ignore Alien Orders
  2. Responsibility by Kawahee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not up to the open source community to look after their own trademarks and stuff like that. There should already be initiatives for non-for-profit or (cyber)community-minded groups like the OSS community to get a hold of trademarks for non-for-profit reasons. I live in Australia, and I think we've got fair(ish) copyright laws, but not something like this. Does anyone live in a country that has this sort of system/law?

    --
    I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
  3. Re:Trademark by nudeatom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I dont want to start a flamewar, but surely "Linux" is more distinctive than "Windows", "Apple", "McDonalds" etc etc

    --
    Yeah right, Like Im gonna write a sig.
  4. Re:See Also... by linhux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, if you read the mail (and you seem to know Swedish, so you could), you'll see that the poster claims that the logo in question is identified as a rotated Debian logo even when compared pixel-by-pixel. Simply using the same Illustrator brush shouldn't produce that kind of similarity, should it?