[Phpgroupware-developers] trademark issue

[Dan Kuykendall]

I just spent a little time on the phone with the FSF and think I have a 
good solution for this.

The FSF does handle a couple of trademarks. However their rule for their 
trademarks are that they will only license to people/organizations that 
are using it for FREE software.
So for example Debian and Redhat which uses all FREE software could use 
it. But SUSE which has proprietary installer, could not use it.

So if the FSF owned the PHPGROUPWARE trademark then organizations that 
wanted to release it with proprietary modules, or whatever, could not do so.

There are two problems with this:
1) While I understand the FSF's policy to match with their goals, it is 
not entirely what the phpGW community would want. The phpGW community, 
and myself personally are ok with allowing prorpietary apps to be sold.
2) Im not going to assign away the trademark anyways

The solution:
1) I will give a license to the FSF to allow them to then license the 
name to any organization/person who wants to use it for FREE software.
2) I will then handle any licenses needed for proprietary reasons.


Dan