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-- NathanaelNerode <<DateTime>> -- NathanaelNerode <<DateTime(2007-04-12T11:11:59Z)>>

Because of a number of hardware related problems (hard drive failure affecting my $HOME recently, and a physical move and ISP change affecting the MX host for my domain), it is difficult to coordinate a discussion of my work on a new trademark-management policy for Debian via email -- and IRC demands that any participants synchronize their schedules. Therefore I am placing my thoughts here and I invite your discussion, questions, and commentary. -- ?BrandenRobinson 2006-10-28 17:31:23

Background

As many of you know, there is an uncomfortable tension between the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)[1], and the nature of trademark law as it applies to copyrightable works. This tension is particularly painful in the case of "branding" materials that serve to mark the identity of a work and/or its producer, and often imply some degree of endorsement by that producer. A case in point are logos, such as our Open Use and Official Use Logos[2].

(Note that the context of my discussion is U.S. law, but as I understand it, various international treaties ensure that essentially the same problems arise in most or all jurisdictions where the Debian Project has a measurable presence.)

Historically, Debian has been unable to do much to resolve these tensions because it did not own the copyright in the logos; that was retained by the logos' creator, Raul Silva.

A little over one year ago, Mr. Silva executed a copyright assignment to Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI). SPI's legal counsel, Greg Pomerantz, acknowledged receipt of this assignment on 23 September 2005. Martin Michlmayr was instrumental in seeing this process through.

We are therefore at a point now where we can develop a trademark/copyright policy that more closely reflects our desires. Many on this list, including myself, have expressed dissatisfaction with the rigidity of trademark law, mainly because it all but compels trademark holders to behave aggressively to those who attach a trademark to a work that has been customized by someone other than the trademark holder.

Sadly, the Free Software community in general has not developed trademark policies for copyrighted works that have meshed very well with the DFSG, nor with the Open Source Definition[3], nor even with simpler statements such as the Free Software Foundation's "Four Freedoms"[4] that many of us consider essential properties of Free Software.

The reason for this is that when a trademark applies to a work of Free Software, and a third party exercises his or her license to modify that work consistent with DFSG #3, OSD #3, or the FSF's Freedom 3, the work is no longer the product of the trademark holder, and distribution of the modified work can be considered "passing off" in common-law jurisdictions such as the United States. Black's Law Dictionary, Seventh Edition, defines "passing off" as:

  • passing off, n. The act or instance of falsely representing one's own product as that of another in an attempt to decieve potential buyers. * Passing off is actionable in tort under the law of unfair

    competition. -- Also termed palming off. [...]

If a trademark has been registered with an appropriate government authority, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), then the scope of remedies typically becomes greater. In the U.S., the relevant law is referred to informally as the Lanham Act, and is codified in Title 15 of the United States Code.

That a modifier and distributor of a trademarked work is really engaged in "passing off" when they engage in activities explicitly endorsed by the same work's copyright license would, I would think, raise a significant and plausible defense, challenging the requirements of "false representation" and intent to "deceive" -- but the Debian Project strives to avoid litigation, and to honor the desires of upstream authors and other rightsholders, regardless of the plausibility of their legal theories of remedy.

The reasons for this are twofold; firstly, we do not have deep pockets, and while that might make us a less desirable target for recovery of damages, we do not want to expend the modest assets we have on defending lawsuits.

Secondly, and more importantly in my view, I think there is a case to be made that when we ship a work in main, we are representing it to the broader community as a positive example of Free Software. In a way, we are helping those in the Free Software community to get to know their good neighbors, their fellows who participate cooperatively in the overall mission of empowering each and every individual computer user to assert control over their environment in a way that creators of proprietary software deliberately withhold.

Examples of the Free Software community's difficulty with developing a copyright and trademark policies for logos include ?AbiWord[5], Mozilla Firefox[6]...and ourselves[7].

Both representatives of ?AbiWord and Mozilla Corporation noted the licensing terms we have on our Open Use Logo criticized us for holding them to higher standards than we held ourselves.

To review, the license on our Open Use Logo reads, in full:

  • This logo or a modified version may be used by anyone to refer to the Debian Project, but does not indicate endorsement by the project.

This fails most interpretations of the DFSG I've seen on over the years, because (perhaps among other flaws), it withholds permission to even *use* the logo for an unapproved purpose, such as *not* referring to the Debian Project. It isn't really a copyright license at all -- it's much closer to a trademark license.

However, to my knowledge, no trademark-using project in the Free Software community has done anything more productive than point out that we all live in the same glass houses.

After being piqued by yet another iteration of the same old sort of tired trademark problems, and discussing the issue with Anthony Towns[8], I'd like to take some action.

I propose that we rise to the challenge.

Proposal

  • We place the swirl-only version Open Use Logo under the MIT (a.k.a. MIT/X11, a.k.a MIT/Expat) copyright license[9].
    • We could of course use a copyleft, but if part of our enterprise is to set a positive example for the community, I think using a license that is permissive and -- above all -- simple is a good way to achieve that.
  • We retain the Official Use Logo under its current license, or something substantially similar.
    • This is where we will site our logo trademark interest.
    • I feel the Official Use Logo could express its license in improved terms; I think we should be frank that modification is not permitted, and we should explicitly grant permission to distribute works using the logo as permitted under the other listed terms. Furthermore, it may or may not be a bug that the terms of the Official Use Logo refer to "documented procedure[s]" on www.debian.org; nowadays we seem to produce a fair amount of documentation on wiki.debian.org instead.
    • AnthonyTowns writes: I think we should separate the copyright and trademark restrictions for this, and say that copyright is DFSG-free, but retain the "official use only" restriction with trademark rights. That means other people can use the image files to create their own logos (as long as they're not confusingly similar to Debian's), and if someone creates a confusingly similar logo from scratch, they're still blocked by the trademark restrictions.

  • NathanaelNerode writes: Total agreement with Anthony Towns. How do we write this?

  • We place the swirl-and-text version of the Open Use Logo under the same terms as the Official Use Logo.
    • This is the part of my proposal that gives me the most trepidation, but I do not see how we can in good conscience free the version of the Open Use Logo with the word "Debian" in it and also pursue a policy of defending our trademark on the word "Debian" itself (see below). To be permissive with the Open Use Logo's graphical representation of the word "Debian", and with any modified form of it per the MIT license, and yet be restrictive with the *word* Debian splits much too fine a hair for my taste. Furthermore, making such a subtle distinction might frustrate actual efforts to prevail in a legal confrontation with an infringer. Most importantly, I cannot see how making such distinction could be anything but deeply confusing to the public and our distributors.
  • We request that SPI register the Official Use Logo with the USPTO.
  • We do not request that SPI register the Open Use Logo with the USPTO.

There is one further point I should mention, but it's not part of this proposal proper, because I recommend only that we continue with the status quo:

  • We maintain our "typed drawing" trademark in the word "Debian", as already registered with the USPTO.[10]

Consequences

  • Essentially, we will be donating the swirl-only version of the Open Use Logo to the community. To a significant degree, I think this simply recognizes an existing fact; the Debian Open Use swirl has been popular and successful. The association between it and the Debian Project is established; people know it as "the Debian swirl". It has appeared on stickers, T-shirts, and even tattoos.
    • The traditional reasoning is to say, "well, that means we want to protect it under trademark even MORE!". I disagree. I think that the Open Use swirl has already succeeded, and its meme is established. There are many derivative distributions of Debian, and making the Open Use swirl logo unambiguously free will encourage them to communicate to their buying public their Debian-based origins. This will, I suspect, increase our visibility.

* NathanaelNerode writes: Only just discovered this page. There are fundamental problems with the "no restrictions" approach. We actually want the swirl to represent Debian. It is just fine to give permission for it to be used to identify anything "Debian-based"; but quite frankly what if a RedHat-based distribution or a version of Microsoft Windows decided to use it? Palming off is a real issue, and we really do want to prohibit it, and it really is Free to prohibit it. We just want to be careful not to prohibit anything *except* palming off, to put it simply.

  • Any copies of the Open Use swirl in main -- and there are many -- can stay. With no trademark restrictions, and a clearly DFSG-free copyright license, there is no reason for us or any of our derivative distributions to remove it.
  • It has been noted that the font we use for the word "Debian" in our Open Use and Official Use Logos is copyrighted by a corporation and is non-free.[11] By removing the textual representation of the word "Debian" from our Open Use Logo, we will be consistent with our belief that the DFSG-freeness of a work includes the freedom to modify and share the "source form" of a work, and not just its compiled or processed end result. It would be nice if Debian had the power to place DFSG-free copyright terms on the font we use for the word "Debian" in our logo, but that is not the case.

Notes

[1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

[2] http://www.debian.org/logos/

[3] http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

[4] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00236.html

[6] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622

[7] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=212895

  • (Not a perfect link, but the best I could do for the moment since, to my surprise, there's neither an open nor an archived bug against www.debian.org about this.)

[8] Our current Project Leader, if you didn't know...

[9] The full text of the MIT license is:

  • Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

[10] To view our trademark record:

  1. Go to: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=afiq83.1.1

  2. Click "New User Form Search (Basic)".
  3. Enter "Debian" into the "Search Term" input box.
  4. Click "Submit Query".
  5. View the record.
  6. Click "Logout".

[11] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20060816.211727.f0201cbc.en.html

  • A better cite is welcome.

Discussion

Please note that the above is a draft.

I have had further discussions with Anthony Towns on this subject, and I still have to integrate his remarks from our IRC discussion. I hope to do that in the coming days. Here is a really brief summary.

  • Open Use logo -- as above
  • "Partners" logo -- a new logo TBD, and which is automatically licensed for use to anyone who complies with the licenses on the works within the distribution, provides a public bug tracking system, and otherwise engages in a short list of best practices
  • Official Use logo -- as above, permission is granted to use the license only subject to review and approval by Debian Project personnel

Anthony is very keen on establishing a "Partners" program. I like the idea as well, but he and I mildly differ on the exact terms of the automatic licensing that would attach to it. He would like to ensure that partners have a public bug tracking system and some straightforward way of publishing the "diffs" between official Debian packages and the ones the partner changes. Myself, I like the elegance of simply licensing the a partners-logo trademark automatically if and only if the would-be partner complies with the copyright licenses on all the works from Debian they distribute.

There are some technical changes that would have to be made to some packages, and not just to realize the above policy (instances of the Official Use logo would have to be removed, and instances of the Open Use logo with the word "Debian" in the non-free font in them would have to be edited or removed). We would also likely need to make base-files and other core packages "brandable" in some way. We might also want to break the semantics of /etc/debian_version up a little bit, perhaps with an /etc/vendor file or something like that which can be used to answer the distinct questions:

  • Who produced this OS? (/etc/vendor)

  • What version of Debian GNU/Linux is this OS compatible with? (/etc/debian_version)

I pointed out to Anthony that dpkg's lack of support for diverting conffiles (with dpkg-divert) makes it needlessly tedious to perform "branding" operations, because files like /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net are conffiles, yet have the word "Debian" hard-coded into them.

I welcome your insights. -- ?BrandenRobinson 2006-10-28 17:31:23

I suggest that we show a good example and drop all restrictions on the use of Debian trademarks. After that Debian Free Trademark Guidelines could be drafted that would describe requirements to allowed trademark licences for packages in Debian main. There is little to gain from enforsing trademarks except a chance to sue someone. That is of no use in the free software world and should be strongly discouraged. -- AigarsMahinovs 2006-10-28 18:06:53

Proposals by Nathanael Nerode

Here's a rough draft suggestion for a trademark license template for something like the Open Use logo, which matches exactly what we want, I think. It has gobs of explanatory text, because I couldn't figure out how else to make it crystal clear. :-/

  • This is a trademark. It represents the Debian Project and the Debian distribution. We grant blanket permission to anyone to use the trademark (or derivative marks) in any way except one: you may not use it to falsely represent something else as being the Debian Project or the Debian distribution. This means that you may, for instance, use it to indicate a Debian-based distribution; you may use it to indicate that you distribute copies of Debian or Debian-based software; you may use it to indicate that you provide a service related to Debian or for the benefit of Debian users; you may use it to express an opinion about Debian; you may use it as an abstract artwork; but you may not use it as the logo for your entirely independent, unrelated software project.
  • In addition, this work is covered by copyright. The trademark restriction above only applies to the trademark and confusingly similar marks: so if you create a very different-looking modification of this work, you may use that as the logo for your entirely independent, unrelated software project. We grant a license to the copyright of this work as follows; the following license is not a trademark license. (Follow with standard license of your choice.)

Now, for the Official Use Logo, I think the change would be:

  • This is a trademark. It represents endorsement by the Debian Project. We grant blanket permission to anyone to use the trademark (or derivative marks) in any way except one: you may not use it to falsely represent something which does not have the endorsement of the Debian Project as having the endorsement of the Debian Project. This means that you may, for instance, use it along with the words "Based on" to indicate a Debian-based distribution (since your distribution is based on the version endorsed by Debian); you may use on copies of the official Debian CDs (which are endorsed by Debian); you may use it for links to the Debian website; you may use it to express an opinion about Debian's standards of endorsement; you may use it as an abstract artwork; but you may not use it as the logo for your unendorsed Debian-based distribution.
  • In addition, this work is covered by copyright. The trademark restriction above only applies to the trademark and confusingly similar marks: so if you create a very different-looking modification of this work, you may use that as the logo for your unendorsed Debian-based distribution or other project. We grant a license to the copyright of this work as follows; the following license is not a trademark license. (Follow with standard license of your choice.)

Now, for the word "Debian", I think the change would be:

  • The word "Debian" is a trademark. It represents the Debian Project and the Debian distribution. We grant blanket permission to anyone to use the trademark (or derivative marks) in any way except one: you may not use it to falsely represent something else as being the Debian Project or the Debian distribution. This means that you may, for instance, use "Debian-Based" to indicate a Debian-based distribution; you may use it to indicate that you distribute copies of Debian or Debian-based software; you may use it to indicate that you provide a service related to Debian or for the benefit of Debian users; you may use it to express an opinion about Debian; but you may not use it as the name for your entirely independent, unrelated software project.

As you may have guessed, I disagree strongly with Aigars. Traditional trademark rights are genuinely worth enforcing. If we give up on basic trademark rights, we might as well stop allowing name-change clauses *and* attribution clauses in copyright licenses, both of which are intended to accomplish much the same thing. In order to set a good example, what we need to do is demonstrate that trademarks can be used in a responsible, non-overreaching way. This is akin to using free software licenses rather than just throwing stuff in the public domain.

The serious defect in my proposals is that the license is not generic; it has to be reworded for each trademark. This was a side effect of making it very, very, very clear. I would love to see a generic license which accomplishes the same goal. (Note that the licenses do *not* require that they be copied along with any use of the trademark, unlike most copyright licenses, so the bloat problem isn't nearly as bad, but it's still a problem.)

-- NathanaelNerode 2007-04-12 11:11:59