Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 15:05:47 -0700 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, "Brett Glass" <brett@lariat.org> Cc: "Jonathan Lemon" <jlemon@americantv.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, <jkh@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <000801befbd8$a2d3f4a0$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909101058510.14497-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
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> I hope to god you need permission to use the 'FreeBSD' trademark, and if > Walnut Creek is the ones to fund and forward the legal bitch-slapping > should you use it without permission I only hope that the effort doesn't > hurt them financially and that you have to pawn your computer to cover the > damages. I agree entirely. The 'FreeBSD' name is invested in the notion of freedom. When you think of 'FreeBSD', you think of a BSD operating system that is _free_. Were you to use this name for a distribution that was not free, the reputation of the FreeBSD name would be harmed. It is in the interest of the trademark holders not to allow you to do this. [from another message, Brett speaking now] > You're right. But because Walnut Creek pays several employees to > work full-time > on FreeBSD, their contributions are substantial. Yank them -- or > even some of > them -- and production of an independent distribution becomes > difficult or even > infeasible. Once you release code under a BSD-style license, you can't "yank" it. This is really descending into baseless paranoia. But I do agree that it would be nice to have an objective list of requirements for using the 'FreeBSD' moniker, if such a thing does not exist already. However, you still have to appreciate that it's not fair to the FreeBSD project to have their name used on something that they don't feel advances their cause (or worse, harms it). What's so hard about coming up with your own name? You can even say objectively true things like "based upon FreeBSD release 3.2". But if it _isn't_ FreeBSD, why should you be allowed to _call_ it FreeBSD? And why should that be your decision rather than the trademark holder's? [from another message, Brett again] >Because playing favorites, and/or picking and choosing who can create >a distribution that says "FreeBSD" on it, is every bit as inappropriate >as it would be to pick and choose who could use the code. For the project >to impose such a restriction would be unwise, as well, because it would >make it more difficult for users to identify distributions of FreeBSD as >such. This, in turn, will hurt both FreeBSD and new distributions. I could not disagree more. FreeBSD seems to like the fact that all its distributions share basic similarities. If they believe that this has value, and they hold the trademark, they can and should protect it. You are free to disagree with them, of course, but you are not free to take their intellectual property and apply it against their interests. Nor are you free to decide what their interests are. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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