[Debburn-devel] License of cdrkit - GPLv2 + additional restrictions

[Josselin Mouette]

Le dimanche 24 septembre 2006 à 23:32 +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit :
> > Jörg Schilling interprets this restriction as implied by trademark law
> > in his country.
> 
> I don't know whether his interpretation is a legally valid one (IANAL),
> even though I've heard of cases where courts prevented the attempt to
> use an exclusive right (copyright, trademark, ...) to block
> interoperability.
> Here, the restriction clearly forbids creating a derivative work that is
> a drop-in replacement of the original, and thus interferes with
> interoperability.

It does, but to what extent? AIUI wodim doesn't output this text and can
be a drop-in replacement without a problem.

> > Replacing the text by a 'this software cannot return
> > "schily" because it would infringe on Jörg Schilling's trademark'
> > notice - or no notice at all - would seem like a fine solution.
> 
> Dropping this restriction from cdrkit would be a solution, if a
> qualified lawyer confirms that we have the right to do so...

I agree that we need some legal expertise to confirm that. Doesn't
Debian or SPI have access to a lawyer for such cases? What is the
appropriate procedure?

> Anyway, let's not split hairs on the validity of Joerg Schilling's
> claims: what we are talking about are clearly non-free restrictions (I
> hope we can agree on that...) and must thus be solved somehow.

I think the problem is more about GPL-compatibility than about
DFSG-freeness. DFSG #4 already allows licenses forbidding re-use of the
name or version number, and this isn't much a different case here.
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin.mouette at ens-lyon.org
`. `'                        joss at debian.org
   `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom