NewsForge: Trademarks: A Threat to Free Software’s Freedom?

“Do trademarks require a special license for software to be
free? That is the question that Debian developers are currently
debating. The specific concern is whether AbiWord’s recent
assertion of trademarks conflict with the Debian Free Software
Guidelines (DFSG), the set of principles under which the Debian
distribution operates. However, the implications could affect not
only Debian’s use of other trademarked packages, such as Mozilla,
Evolution, and OpenOffice.org, but other GNU/Linux distributions’
use of them as well.

“The first clause of the DFSG reads:

“The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party
from selling or giving away the software as a component of an
aggregate software distribution containing programs from several
different sources…”

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