Fedora LiveCD : Looking for Betatesters - Port of redhat 9.0base to fedora core 1 / Legal issue Discussion

[Jef Spaleta]

Dirk Westfal wrote:
> That's why I'm using the term 'based on' or 'uses packages of'.   
> Currently (and also in future) my cd does not use any official logos of 
> neither redhat nor fedora.

Personally, I'd be wary of even doing that. The right answer of course
is, trademark is a crappy legal issue..and therefore the only way to
really settle it is to talk to a lawyer. The src code is of course there
to be used...but the point at which one can claim a specialized distro
is 'based on' Fedora is a not well defined in layspeak. Nothing I've
read so far in the trademark section of the fedora.redhat.com website
jumps out and says yes/no to this specific sort of 'based on' or
'packages from' advertising. My reading of
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/trademarks/guidelines/ tells me
you should get clarification from some form of legal counsel.

But stepping back from the legalese arguments for a moment. Are you
prepared to remove advertising that says your liveCD was based on
Fedora, if the Fedora leadership made that request? Legally binding
trademark issues aside. I think there are pros/cons to having
experimental development to be able to use 'based on' Fedora
advertising. On the pro side...its a PR win for Fedora to be seen as
enabling a range of experimental development, thats a PR win for a more
open process. On the con side... any problems with a custom distro
picking up and using pieces of Fedora make it harder to distinguish
where bug reports go and could become a drag on the official development
process. What happens if your patched kernel exposes a bug in a fedora
package that you are using in your liveCD? Where do those bug reports
live? Is it even appropriate for users of your liveCD to report back any
problems to the Fedora development process? Is the real value in the
Fedora brand going to be the bits and pieces or is it going to be the
development process and structure? If the value is in the development
process...the saying 'based on' Fedora would be interpreted as 'based
on' the development process.


>>
>> There exists ntfs read support apparently.
>>
>> Actually, veering from this, maybe we should be creating a Fedora non-us
>> archive of sorts? Or is Fedora Extras a project that'll keep the NTFS
>> stuff, and the non-blessed Core stuff? (currently, that seems to be the
>> case, with the mplayer/divx/mp3 archives).

>That could be a great idea -  especially for a non us customer...

Again there are going to be issues with calling anything 'Fedora.'
There is clearly a place and a demand for a 'freeworld' shadow community
process and repository structure that builds on top of
the base Fedora process to provide open-source solutions that a US based
organization is prohibited from providing for non-technical reasons. But
for the same non-technical reasons, it will be very difficult for the
official Fedora process to even link or to talk about the 'freeworld'
structure that springs up.   

-jef