[Fsf-friends] Indian Express

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Mahesh T. Pai said on Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 10:18:07PM +0530,:

 > But more  than the  Courts, we  need to look  into the  ethical issues
 > involved. RH does  not like their logos to be used;  the logos are not
 > under  a  free  license.  Do  not  distribute  them.  Period.  End  of
 > distribution.
 > 
 > The costs to be paid to the free software developer community by going
 > ahead with  such distribution will  be high.  The  entire geographical
 > region will have to bear that. Can we afford it??

I am afraid I am not clear enough on this and open to be
under-understood.

Software  distribution involves law  of Copyright.  When people  use a
special symbol to refer to a product from a special origin, the law of
Trademarks applies. And then, some people claim patents too apply.

The free software movement uses  the law of copyright to keep programs
unrestricted. When people  claim patents to apply, we  insist that the
patents too should  be licensed free of restrictions.  As a community,
we  do not  concern ourselves  with trademarks  *for  keeping software
free*.

The individual members /  corporates consisting the community can, and
do apply trademarks to programs  / collections distributed by them. We
have  an obligation  to respect  the terms  under which  use  of these
tradekmarks are permitted.

I invite your attention to the  case of a once popular mail client. It
was  under an  apparently free  license.  But creator  of the  ptogram
choose to  interpret the  license in a  manner which  restricts users'
freedoms;  with the  result that  major distros  ceased  to distribute
binaries of  the mail client.  We did not  insist that 'but  every one
else interprets those words differently'.

I  suggest  that  we adopt  the  same  approach  here.  RH's  and  our
perceptions of what constitutes `commercial use' may differ; but if RH
insists that  a particular activity  is commercial, we can  and should
respect  that view  in so  far  as use  of anything  under a  non-free
license is concerned. We should not speculate on what the courts *may*
hold.  This approach will earn us better standing in the community.

-- 
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  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
  'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,               
  Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,               
  Kerala, India.                          
                                          
  http://in.geocities.com/paivakil         
                                          
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