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

[Jeremiah Foster]

David Greaves wrote;

<snip>

>> 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.
>
> Can I ask how this applies to the 50+ packages which are currently part of
> meego but which are opensource and many of which we presumably expect to be
> used elsewhere?
>
> eg:
> libmeegochat
> libmeegotouch
> maemo-meegotouch-interfaces (!)
> meego-handset-* (21)
> meegotouch-* (14)
> meegotouchcp-* (8)
> pulseaudio-modules-meego
>
> I assume the MeeGo project is implicitly giving permission to use these as
> package and library names by publishing the packaging and tarballs under the
> relevant license?

We cannot make that assumption. We'll need an explicit statement on
trademark from the Linux Foundation regarding the MeeGo trademark if
the Linux Foundation wants MeeGo "branded" software available in
Debian. I'm no expert on the trademarking of software libraries but I
understand it is difficult to exercise trademark claims against
software libraries. In this case it would seem highly problematic for
some of the libraries, like maemo-meegotouch-interfaces, since it
would appear to be two separate trademarks (maemo and meego) with two
separate trademark holders, Nokia and LF respectively.

There appears to be some intentional bias with regard to naming, as if
the Linux Foundation wanted to specify their provenance as opposed
making these libraries more generic and thereby potentially widening
their appeal. While I understand the need for trademark to some
degree, and while the use of trademark protection for Linux seems
useful, protecting the trademark of one distro at the cost of the
other distros seems to be counter to the Linux Foundation's charter.

Clearly the fairest naming scheme would to change the library names to
something without the trademark.

Jeremiah