Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on October 20, 2005 11:20 PM
"Debian" is nothing more, legally, than a trademark. You're asking that Debian ignore a threat to it's very existence. Ignoring a trademark infringement loses you the trademark.
Oh, a free software distribution would still exist if the trademark were lost. It (and a ton of derivative distributions) would probably all call themselves Debian. Some of them would be very incompatible even though they all called themselves Debian, and there would be much confusion. apt-get wouldn't work well anymore, due to the mixture of authority. Fights might well break out over control of the debian.org domain and the mirror network.
The confusion would cause a loss of userbase, and lead to a loss in developers and interest. The world would lose the comprehensive Linux distribution that is Debian.
So, attempting to regularize a trademark infringement is a pretty small price to pay to still have Debian in a few years time.
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Re:Debian should not be distracted by this fluff
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on October 20, 2005 11:20 PMOh, a free software distribution would still exist if the trademark were lost. It (and a ton of derivative distributions) would probably all call themselves Debian. Some of them would be very incompatible even though they all called themselves Debian, and there would be much confusion. apt-get wouldn't work well anymore, due to the mixture of authority. Fights might well break out over control of the debian.org domain and the mirror network.
The confusion would cause a loss of userbase, and lead to a loss in developers and interest. The world would lose the comprehensive Linux distribution that is Debian.
So, attempting to regularize a trademark infringement is a pretty small price to pay to still have Debian in a few years time.
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