Article: "Fixing linux" - opinions?

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms at 1407.org
Sat Dec 13 16:37:21 UTC 2008


On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 04:16:11PM +0000, Noah Slater wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 10:32:32AM -0500, simo wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-12-13 at 08:38 +0000, Noah Slater wrote:
> > > On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 12:39:55AM +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> > > > Yes, you can modify the artwork.
> > >
> > > No, you cannot modify the artwork and redistribute.
> >
> > This is plainly false, as long as you don't use the trademarks you can.
> 
> False. You cannot modify the Firefox logo.

I'm not defending what the Mozilla Foundation is doing, Trademarks are a
tricky business, but you're confusing issues. As long as you confuse
trademark law with copyright law, and artwork with code, you'll just
make mistakes like those of your reasoning.

> The original message had misunderstood that you cannot modify the Firefox logo.

Because of a trademark issue, not because of a copyright issue. If you
replace the artwork you get the same software.

> > Now consider that you cannot change any Free Software program name into
> > Coca-Cola and redistribute it. Does it mean they are all non-Free because
> > there is at least one modification you can't make ?
> 
> Of course not.

But it's the same problem, you can't use the Coca-Cola logo on any Free
Software, is it no longer free now?

> Firefox is the name of the software when branded as Firefox.
> When branded as Firefox, with the logo and the name, the software is non-free.

The small hassle of removing the logo and the name corrects that, and
some distributions do that, as such, you're making much ado about
nothing.

ATI and NVidia proprietary drivers worry me much more.

Rui

-- 
Fnord.
Today is Boomtime, the 55th day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?



More information about the Discussion mailing list