[Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]

[Lawrence Rosen]

> That's what led me to think the same thing about logos - the web has tons
> of little box logos, e.g. "get Firefox", "IE 5.0 only" (hah), "created by
> WordPress", etc., and no one's telling those holders their marks are at
> risk.

I recall, in the early days, telling Robin Miller that he couldn't change
colors or fonts on the officially-approved OSI logo when/if he used it as a
flag for articles on Slashdot, and that he could use the logo only as a link
from those articles to the OSI website or to other similar OSI-related
articles. He refused and (IIRC) designed his own logo, similar to but not
enough alike our logo that it didn't risk our logo's trademark status and
yet gave him the freedom he wanted.

Of course, then OSI never promoted its logo to the point where such issues
really matter. We have not yet become the BBB or UL mark for software that
I'd hoped for. :-(

I can't vouch for trademark expectations in the software industry, but I'm
pretty confident most of the "get Firefox" logos actually do link directly
to the Firefox site for free downloads of the official software. (Does
anyone here know of any situation where that logo links to an "unauthorized"
derivative work of the official Firefox distribution?) And I'm also pretty
confident that displaying the "get Firefox" logo is a voluntary step taken
by enthusiastic supporters of Firefox rather than a requirement of its
license.

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Behlendorf [mailto:brian at collab.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 9:21 AM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: RE: [Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]
> 
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2006, Larry M. Augustin wrote:
> > I don't believe you need a license to the trademark Foo to say a piece
> of
> > software is "Foo-based", "derived from Foo", or "based on Foo".  That's
> > simply an expression of fact describing the origin of the code in the
> > derivative work.  I believe you could require attribution of that form
> > without granting a license to the trademark.
> 
> That's what led me to think the same thing about logos - the web has tons
> of little box logos, e.g. "get Firefox", "IE 5.0 only" (hah), "created by
> WordPress", etc., and no one's telling those holders their marks are at
> risk.
> 
>  	Brian