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The GPL does also say "e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks" as the parent noted. This is
by SahAssar 7y ago
The GPL does also say "e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks" as the parent noted. This is basically that, you can't distribute a modified rust and call it rust, just like you can distribute a modified Chrome and call it Chrome. I don't see the issue here.
- einpoklum 7y agoBut Chrome is a branding of a basic, branding-less, project - Chromium. With Rust, I'm guessing the nae "Rust" is used all over the place. "Some trade names and marks" is not "basically the entire work".
- SahAssar 7y agoI don't get how you get to the point of seeing the rust trademark as "the entire work". If you modified rustc and called it "FeO, a compiler for rust", you'd be fine. Just don't call what isn't rust "rust" and it's OK. Nothing in the FOSS ethos gives you a right to misrepresent a product, you get the right to modify software, not to say it's something it isn't. Let's consider two cases: 1. I forked rust, made a bunch of changes that are not compatible with upstream and setup rust.engineering (which is free right now) to say my fork is the rust then the rust devs should be able to tell me to not use their name for my product. 2. I forked rust, made a bunch of changes that are not compatible with upstream and setup feo.engineering (which is free right now) to point to my fork and say "feo is a rust-derived language" then that should be fine. My reading of the license allows for the second use case, but not the first, which I feel is the right way. What is the problem with not allowing people to misrepresent the source of the code?