[Pkg-meego-maintainers] Packaging the MeeGo stack on Debian - Use the name ?

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Fr, 2010-12-10 at 11:24 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Ibrahim Haddad wrote:
> > We would ask you to move away from using {M,m}-e-e-{G,g}-o or any subset of
> > those letters or sounds in that order, alone or in combination with other
> > letters, words or marks that would tend to cause someone to make a
> > reasonable connection of the reference with the MeeGo mark. We specifically
> > discussed one possibility for illustration purposes – which is to use MG in
> > the place of MeeGo.  We do not think that a plain text MG, when used in
> > reference to the code, as in a file or project or team name, would cause a
> > reasonable person to be confused.
> 
> OK, so for this to be possible, {M,m}-e-e-{G,g}-o must be never used
> in the works of The Meego Project as a functional term.  That is to
> ask, is it possible to change the name without impacting on other
> software which uses the works of The Meego Project?  There is no
> libmeego* or anything like that?
> 
> If there is a libmeego*, then clearly meego should be used in some way
> for interoperability and I suggest the trademark policy changes to be
> reasonable and explicitly allow use of meego as part of functional
> names.  That is, drop the file name constraint above.  It's just
> honest description of the upstream source of the code and not
> necessarily used in product names.  File names aren't normally covered
> by trademarks, are they?
> 
> If there isn't a libmeego* or similar, I guess all is well and I
> thank everyone for clarifying it.

There is libmeegotouch and a lot of stuff has meego in the package
names, we can't really change that without breaking compatibility.

Some further things for Ibrahim:
      * Our team name is a unix group name and it's pkg-meego (meaning
        package software from MeeGo). The trademark is used to refer to
        the upstream part, so people know what is packaged. That's the
        same for pkg-mozilla and all the other teams, and just a
        technical detail. We'd like to keep it, since changing it is
        impossible (you need to delete the old group and create a new
        one instead).
      * I propose that we use MeeGo in other things like this:
              * Replace:
                      * Debian MeeGo Team
                      * Debian MeeGo stack maintainers
                      * Debian MeeGo packaging Team
              * By:
                      * Packagers of MeeGo-originated and related
                        software
              * This makes it clear that MeeGo refers to upstream only,
                and that this is not officially MeeGo.
      * Package names contain meego everywhere. According to common
        believe, they are not subject to trademark restrictions (that's
        why we had a firefox compatibility package for
        firefox->iceweasel transition). They are merely an
        implementation detail, that MeeGo set in stone, and we cannot
        change it without breaking compatibility

So, I propose that we replace occurences of MeeGo in descriptive text
with MeeGo-originated, and use meego only (and only as a technical
detail such as file or package name) where we are required to do so,
that is, in libraries like libmeegotouch. From my reading this is
consistent with the trademark policy and it clearly shows that it is not
meego.

Furthermore, if MeeGo is an open project and the MeeGo trademark owned
by LF, why is Nokia handled differently than anyone else? Why are they
allowed to use MeeGo/Harmattan for the next product when it is in fact
not MeeGo?


-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.