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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Re: gnome look option in kpersonalizer
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2002-11-20 10:13:50
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Hi,

I find this reaction a bit troubling.  Can someone explain why you can't
trademark a product name b/c of the GPL?  In my view trademark law and the GPL
can co-exist quite nicely. 

In fact, it is often desirable even for KDE to restrict use of the name "KDE". 
Imagine for example that someone came out with a desktop product that included
parts of "KDE" and wanted to call it "KDE", thereby confusing everybody in the
world.  Would we not want to object to that?  Would it benefit the world to have
thousands of forked copies of a product going around with the *same* name, and
nobody being able to clarify the situation?

I don't see the problem here, I don't see any GPL violation, and I don't see why
it would be beneficial to find one.  Perhaps someone can clarify for me what I
am missing.

Regards,

Dre

Philippe FREMY wrote:
> 
> > > - some people are using/modifying/improving the theme with the name
> > > FreeCurve to avoid trademark conflict
> > 
> > those "some people" are Red Hat employees. so it isn't someone just being
> > careful, it's their own people following the corporate line. i also have
> an
> > email from Havoc to a gnome mailing list stating the reason for the name
> > change was because Red Hat had a trademark on the name and therefore
> couldn't
> 
> This is ridiculous. Red Hat employee are not allowed to modify GPL code
> because their employer trademarked it ?
> 
> > > - has RedHat tried to enforce its trademark, threaten to sue projects
> that
> > > would reuse their code ?
> > 
> > only warnings not to from the likes of Havoc Pennington coupled with the
> > actions of Red Hat employees to re-release the BlueCurve theme under a
> > different name to avoid the trademark issue and "allow"
> > redistribution.
> 
> So it looks like, despite the trademark, Red Hat is willing to allow normal
> GPL distribution of the code. Or are their employees distributing FreeCurve
> without the approbation of Red Hat ?
> 
> > > If you confirm the points, I'll forward this to my contact at Trolltech.
> > 
> > please do so, as i really don't have any myself.
> 
> I am sure you can count Mathias Ettrich as a contact. Even if he doesn't
> deal with the problem, he will certainly forward it to the right person. The
> same certainly applies to sales@trolltech.com .
> 
> Do you have the links to Havoc's mails ? I guess this wasn't accepted by
> Gnome hackers as something natural :-)
> 
> Question popping in my mind: is Qt trademarked ? I guess and I hope so. But
> it means Trolltech could do exactly what Red Hat is doing to anybody
> distributing Qt.
> 
> Aaron, if you are still replying to mail at this time, this means you should
> go to bed. :-)
> 
> Have a nice night.
> 
> Philippe
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