Fedora spin from RpmFusion

[Douglas McClendon]

Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 11:55:34AM -0500, Douglas McClendon wrote:
>> Can trademark guidelines on free software restrict the ability to 
>> redistribuite bit-for-bit copies of the software, that don't use the 
>> trademarks in any other way than the fact that they are included in 
>> those bits?
> 
> yes, they can, which is why one of the feature of Fedora 8 is to clean
> up the fedora-logos and redhat-artwork packages, and the addition of
> the generic-logos package, exactly so one can create a derivative of
> Fedora using and containing only Free Software, easily, without including
> the Fedora trademarks.  

Certainly for derivatives and any other modification, it seems obvious 
that trademarks are protected.  My question rather involved bundling an 
unmodified copy of free software with other (free and/or non-free) software.

My not-a-lawyer hunch is that the nature of free software suggests that 
it may be redistributed unmodified in any and all manner.  But a hunch 
is hardly anything to go by.

My scenario involved supplying the end-user with software that makes it 
dirt-simple (i.e. a bootloader choice) for the end-user to apply 
patches.  This is somewhat similar to the ideas I have heard kicked 
around regarding supplying kernel modules as source along with scripts 
that make it as simple for the end-user to turn the source into the 
binary, which for obscure legal reasons could not be distributed as a 
binary.

-dmc