Re: [tlug] GPL non-sense

[Joe Larabell <fred62@example.com>]

> This discussion will work better if you say "trademark" when you mean
> trademark and "copyright" when you mean copyright. Conflating these
> two very different things is pretty much guaranteed to confuse the
> hell out of everyone.

Sure confused the hell out of me ;-)...

If by "trademarks" you're referring to icons and logos, why not just 
replace them with generic icons and logos that are *not* trademarks of 
your client? IANAL, but I don't see anything in the GPL that says you 
can't replace individual bits of a GPLed project and still offer it under 
the GPL as a modification. You're only obligated to supply source that 
matches the binaries you actually distribute -- not sources that match 
binaries for some other version that's distributed by someone else.

If you're referring to the copyright *notice* (ie: the "Copyright (c) 2010 
RedHat, Inc") that's in the code... I doubt anyone would construe that to 
be a trademark that has to be removed on redistribution. And, even if they 
did, would any court uphold that? A trademark violation usually involves 
an act that would confuse consumers while a copyright notice exists to 
unambiguously identify the author of a given work.

But it's a good question... does GPL3 allow someone to distribute GPLed 
code with an additional trademark clause that would *require* copyright 
notices containing that company's name to be removed? That doesn't seem to 
make any sense and would almost certainly conflict with the requirement 
that the copyright notices *not* be removed.

Anyway... if including copyright notices is a trademark violation, you're 
certainly not the only one in deep doo-doo...

---
Joseph L (Joe) Larabell            Never fight with a dragon
http://larabell.org/                    for thou art crunchy
http://thelemicleague.org/        and goest well with cheese.