Joint Authors & Debian Family Legitimate Interests
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Some of my fellow Debian Developers (co-authors) started harassing my family and I back in 2018 at a time when I lost two family members.
Debian oligarchs repeatedly tell us that we are all a family.
Evidence: Andrew Cater says we are a family.
Evidence: Jonathan Wiltshire says we are a family.
Could this be an implicit authorization to use the Debian trademark?
Consider the case of the British royal family.
Prince Harry and Princess Meghan went onto Oprah Winfrey's talk show to talk about problems in the family business. We could say this is analogous to some of my blog posts about the problems in Debian, or the FSFE crisis and other free, open source software groups.
Harry and Meghan were asked to stop using their His/Her Royal Highness (HRH) styles. Harry was banned from wearing military uniform at the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Yet they still have a legitimate interest in using the family name, Windsor.
If Debian really is a family, and it certainly isn't an employer, we can all use the family name even if we are not willing to live with each other in the same castle.
Read more about who has a copyright interest in the Debian GNU/Linux software. █