The problem is that they put their wording in the text that grants you the right to redistribute the bits, in terms of copyright. It's not some text that's expounding Canonical's belief about what constitutes a trademark violation, which would be a different thing. It's a condition of the right of redistribution: Canonical is saying "we will let you redistribute these bits, but ONLY if you do X, Y and Z".
Note this is exactly how the GPL and all other F/OSS licenses work: the author says "this is my work, and I get to choose what you can do with it (more or less), and I say you can redistribute it but only if you do X, Y and Z" (where X, Y and Z are usually something like 'provide the source on request' and 'pass these rights on to others'). Canonical is using the *exact same mechanism*, but the condition they state is "you must remove and replace the Trademarks". Not "you must avoid infringing Canonical's trademark rights".
As Matthew's said, you could read this as simply a drafting error, but he keeps asking Canonical to say "yes, all we mean is that you should avoid infringing on our trademarks, and you can do that just by changing (these specific occurrences)", and Canonical keeps refusing to do that. The longer that dance goes on, the harder it is to just say 'oh well obviously they just *mean* they don't want you to infringe the trademarks'.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at nvidia. Ex-biologist. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon and Bluesky.
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Re: Comparing to Fedora / Comparing to Red Hat
Date: 2015-11-20 08:12 am (UTC)Note this is exactly how the GPL and all other F/OSS licenses work: the author says "this is my work, and I get to choose what you can do with it (more or less), and I say you can redistribute it but only if you do X, Y and Z" (where X, Y and Z are usually something like 'provide the source on request' and 'pass these rights on to others'). Canonical is using the *exact same mechanism*, but the condition they state is "you must remove and replace the Trademarks". Not "you must avoid infringing Canonical's trademark rights".
As Matthew's said, you could read this as simply a drafting error, but he keeps asking Canonical to say "yes, all we mean is that you should avoid infringing on our trademarks, and you can do that just by changing (these specific occurrences)", and Canonical keeps refusing to do that. The longer that dance goes on, the harder it is to just say 'oh well obviously they just *mean* they don't want you to infringe the trademarks'.