[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#391935: Bug #391935: Re: The answer from Citrix & Xen.org

[Bas Zoetekouw]

Hi Robert!

You wrote:

> > If the work will be modified in Debian, and if that would require a 
> > name change under the trademark license, presumably we have another 
> > “Firefox” → “Iceweasel” situation and would have to rename the work 
> > ourselves in order to redistribute it in Debian.
> 
> The situation is somewhat different than that of Firefox.  In that one,
> the logo was non-free, so it was changed;  this was unrelated to the
> trademark, which was only used as an instrument to force us change the
> name as well.  DFSG-compliance of the trademark itself was never put into
> question, AFAIK.

Actually, I think there were two problems with firefox: the logo issue
(that was solved by changing the icon), and the use of the Firefox
trademark, which required anyone who wanted to use the name "firefox"
to use only "official" binaries built by Mozilla.  This second issue
originately seemed similar to the Xen case.

However, after reading Xen's clarifications (thanks for pursuing those,
Josselin!), it seems the issues with Xen are identical to those with
TeX.  Also the name "TeX" can be used for anything compatible with
Knuth's original implementation, and the _code_ may be used for any free
software projects, as long as the name "TeX" is not given to the final
(incompatible) project.  

As this practice is explicitly allowed by DFSG #4, I don't think any
longer that there is an issue here.

> Similarly, I don't think it makes much sense to try appliing the DFSG to
> trademarks.  The DFSG requires that software is modifiable (by us and by
> third parties), and it is, with the only caveat that depending on those
> modifications you might have to change the name.  As has been pointed out,
> the same applies to Apache (with license v1, it was on the license itself,
> and rely only on trademark privileges).

The DFSG-freeness of the code was never in question, it's an issue if
Debian is allowed to use the name "Xen", which we seem to be allowed.
According to DFSG #4, we do not require total freedom for the _name_ of
the program for anyone to whom we distribute the code.

Thanks for everyone's efforts in clearing up this issue!

Bets regards,
Bas.

-- 
Kind regards,
Bas Zoetekouw.