Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 16:36:57 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>, "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> Cc: "Jonathan Lemon" <jlemon@americantv.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, <jkh@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990910161538.044422c0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <000801befbd8$a2d3f4a0$021d85d1@youwant.to> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909101058510.14497-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
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At 03:05 PM 9/10/99 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > 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, Who said I would? Of course, many of Walnut Creek's FreeBSD products contain items which may not be freely copied and which cannot be had for free, such as books. They use the FreeBSD name with no problem. A consistent policy would allow others to do the same. >[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. Did you read my messages explaining why this could be a problem? Briefly, it has to do with the fact that a company owns the work its employees do on company time, and that the copyright notices list the employees -- not the company -- as being willing to license their code under the BSD license. > 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. Good -- we have definite agreement on at least one point. (I think we may already agree on some others as well, actually.) How should this be done? Should it be submitted as a PR to the FreeBSD FAQ? >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). I think I've covered this point already. Clearly, if I am trying to sell a FreeBSD distribution, it is absolutely counter to MY interests to harm the project in any way. So, such a distribution would represent an ALIGNMENT of interests. It might take different approaches to getting to the same goals, but this is arguably a good thing. > 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? Because this has benefits all around. To use a different name would give the impression that it was another BSD "fork," and prevent its users from being tabulated as users of FreeBSD by the bean counters. (We don't want this, since one of the purposes of the distribution would be to enlist more users and close the market share gap between FreeBSD and Linux.) Using the name, on the other hand, would pump up FreeBSD's market share numbers and lead to more ISV support. It's a win/win. > And why should that be your decision rather than the trademark holder's? Again, the entire spirit of the BSDs, as involves intellectual property, is that case-by-case licensing decisions should not be necessary. You set the least restrictive conditions you can without exposing yourself to serious trouble (e.g. a disclaimer of liability) , then set the code (or text, or whatever) free. I think we have already agreed -- above -- that a simple published policy is the way to go. >[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. Wouldn't the policy we've been talking about already cover this? --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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