Re: adding and forking someone else's GPL software - what should i do?

On Mon, 2011-11-21 at 11:56 +0000, Robin Paulson wrote:
> >
> > I think that the GPLv3 allows that additional restriction, though,
> > which is strange; they call out that additional terms including
> > "prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of the software" are
> > permitted.
> 
>  in the specific case i brought up, there are further conflicts which i 
>  had not thought about before. the name of the project, zotero, is 
>  trademarked, but all parts of the project are released under free 
>  licences. the conflict is that some of the code uses the word zotero, 
>  and thus i suppose can't be redistributed without changes. similarly 
>  file and folder names, and the trademark owned by the various sponsors 
>  (a university and other similar academic groups) will be similar as it 
>  is embedded in various places such as the 'about' dialogue. apparently 
>  re-distributors are forbidden from bringing the name of sponsors into 
>  disrepute. also, there are icons and other images which contain the name 
>  of the project. so, it conforms to free software, but due to the 
>  trademark, we can't exercise all the rights given to us under that 
>  license.
> 
>  an odd anomaly, one strand of IP affecting another. i wonder what the 
>  complete, technical, legal stance is?

 Is this not very similar to the Firefox trademark issue with Debian?
 
 Debian wanted to use the Firefox source, but apply their own patches,
which didn't match the Mozilla license (to distribute unmodified), so
they renamed the package, applied new branding, and applied the source
that way.
 
 Might be worth some reading up on that issue?

 Dagan


_______________________________________________
NZLUG mailing list [email protected]
http://www.linux.net.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzlug