On Friday 07 August 2009 20:53:05 Thomas
Vecchione wrote:
Once again forgot to hit Reply-All.
On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net>wrote;wrote:
I'm
not interested to take sides, I only want to learn about the GPL.
Assumed that Miss B. forks a GPL'd project, as far as I understand the
GPL, Miss R. is allowed to fork a project with a similar name, similar
function, based on the open source code of Miss B. and if Miss B. had
no time to open the source code, because she was in the manicure salon,
but Miss B. accepted the GPL, e.g. a mailing list for manicure software
can witness this, than Miss R. is allowed to decompile the software of
Miss B.. Am I wrong?
You are confusing Copyright and Trademark Law. Copyright law says that
yes they can fork the project.
Trademark Law however says that Miss B. is allowed to follow up legally
to prevent a trademark, which can be registered or unregistered, from
being confused by another similar trademark that might be confused with
it. The fact that the trademark is similar, and the product is similar,
is doubly damning in that case.
Then you should talk to Bob Keller for violating the trademark of that
real company that has a possible trademark infringement case against him
first.
That's right, I mentioned it before, that there is this company, but
they don't have an interest in or don't know about Bob's
"trademark".
Anyway, there is that Firefox vs Icedove fact. The names and logos also
can become a problem for FLOSS. Even if Bob is violating a trademark,
you do it too.