[License-discuss] Question: is the following paragraph in violation of OSD6

[Roland Turner]

On 4/10/24 04:12, Lucy Brown via License-discuss wrote:

> You may distribute this Software, with or without fee, provided that 
> you do not advertise the Standard Version of this Software as a 
> product of your own.

I'd suggest that there are better ways of drafting this, in particular 
that it needs to be clear in a legally robust sense what the Standard 
Version is, but the idea is reasonable and doesn't appear to conflict 
with OSD6 (nor the rest of it). For examples of projects which have 
botched this and then had to incur substantial clean up impacts, I'd 
point to:

  * The absurd decade-long Mozilla/Debian stand-off
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_trademark_dispute>
    (and therefore e.g. Firefox rebranded as IceWeasel)
  * The currently-unfolding
    <https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262410/wordpress-fight-trademarks-open-source-mullenweg>WordPress
    <https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262410/wordpress-fight-trademarks-open-source-mullenweg>goat
    rodeo
    <https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262410/wordpress-fight-trademarks-open-source-mullenweg>

For projects where it's relevant, making certain that you've thought 
through:

  * the quality risks of independent integration and distribution under
    your product name (e.g. by Debian etc.); and
  * the commercial issues that may arise if a direct competitor uses
    code that you've funded much of the development of (and perhaps are
    continuing to fund the maintenance of) to out-compete you

before you invest too deeply.


I'd also suggest taking the time to locate a similarly-situated 
project/organisation which has successfully done something like what 
you're trying to do and then studying their approach carefully before 
designing your own. The risk here is assuming that a court of law is 
some sort of wish-fulfilment machine and that one need merely write down 
one's wishes in a contract/license in order to be certain that 
everything will work as desired. This assumption is made a lot and — 
needless to say — absolutely does not work. That you are asking about 
the potential violation of a single OSD criterion by a single license 
condition rather than sharing a whole license draft and its commercial 
context suggests to me that you might be taking an unrealistically 
narrow view at present.

- Roland

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