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

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Before we escalate & put words in people's mouths, we should let Ibrahim
come back with an answer. He said as recently as Friday that he was
going to get a precision on this issue.

That said, there is some factual misunderstanding going on here...

Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> David Greaves wrote;
>> 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?

<snip>

>> 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.

You can always call a rose a rose, regardless of whether someone has a
trademark on it.

If there is a project called libmeegotouch, and someone takes the source
code of libmeegotouch and packages it for Debian, then it's entirely OK
to call the resulting package libmeegotouch.

This is the equivalent to buying a Mars bar and reselling it (as a Mars
bar).

If the thing you're packaging is not the same (say you're applying
substantial patches), the libmeegotouch authors could ask you
legitimately not to release your repackaged & modified software as
libmeegotouch, because this will result in confusion over origins
(think: Iceweasel/Firefox).

This is the equivalent to selling a chocolate, caramel & nougat bar that
you make yourself as a Mars bar.


> I'm no expert on the trademarking of software libraries but I
> understand it is difficult to exercise trademark claims against
> software libraries.

I don't see why it would be... when you get down to it, that's mostly
how Java works.

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

I don't know about fair/unfair, but it would certainly be a resolution path.

-- 
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