On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
that's the entire point of having trademarks. Free software projects are obliged to allow you to access and modify their code. They are not obliged to allow you to benefit from their reputation. It doesn't make any sense to say 'I think this product needs to be modified but I wish to be able to represent my modified product as being the same thing as the original product in order to benefit from the reputation attached to the original product'. --
Trademarks defeat the purpose of it being "free software". They impose restrictions. You have to remove MoFo's artwork and perform a name change or you're required to get permission from Mozilla to redistribute a modified binary. That's not free. At the same time does that logically effect the produced binary if we don't use the Firefox branding? I don't think the artwork and branding makes it any faster or more standards compliant or compatible with plugins. It would instantly remove the restrictions that make it unmaintainable.
Adam Williamson
Looks like RMS agrees too on the trademark issue.