The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re:"Social Contract" [anti-trust]

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl wrote:

> On Jun 26, Bruce Perens wrote
> > How do others feel?
> 
> I agree. It may be wise however to have a trademark on "Debian" and to
> enforce BSD-style restrictions to protect that trademark
> ("We request to be acknowledged in derived work" & "The name Debian may only
> be used in advertisments after prior written agreements by SPI").

This will greatly chill any derived work. The use of Debian as a starting
point for other distributions is only useful if the other distribution can
advertise that it is using Debian. Debian has expressed a strong desire to
become the foundation for other distributions. It can't do that with a
proprietary name. The name Debian should be a freely distributable as our
software. It should be under the same protections that software obtain
with the GNU Public License, in that the name should only be used to
identify the distribution or parts thereof, but if the name can't be used
then no derivative works will ever be produced.

I have created a product that I call "Drop in Debian" or DiD that I
distribute on my CDs, as a value added product. If SPI becomes the only
entity that is allowed to use the name Debian, I will have to rename the
product something like "Drop in *nix of the third kind" which has a gross
acronym.

Are we going to injoin folks who make products that declare that they are
"based on Debian"?

There has been a lot of talk on the list lately about a Debian specific
book. Are we going to take authors to court who use the name Debian in
their title or their book?

I agree we need some mechanism to associate the name Debian with a given
product. The package formate goes a long way toward that identification,
but only for someone who is at least a little technically clued. It has
been pretty clear from recent court cases that the judicial system isn't
at all clued in this reguard.

I'm pretty sure that a trademark is too restrictive a mechanism for this
association. I'm not sure how you would get standing, but something like a
"freemark" might be an interesting exersize for some aspiring young
lawyer.

Waiting is,

Dwarf
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aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
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