The whole #KeePassXC#Debian thing is kinda giving me second thoughts wrt. the whole #Linux distro and #opensource packaging thing in general. My understanding of the implied agreement between me as a dev and a distro's package maintainer is: the maintainer, to the best of their ability, tries to make my software work "as intended". In return, they get to publish it under my software's name.
That's clearly not how Debian views things. And I can't accept distros publishing broken sw w/ my name.
Are there any license or additional legal document I can include in my #foss / #opensource software to ensure that people can't redistribute modified versions under the same name? Sorta like what Firefox was doing which lead to the name IceWeasel for a time. I'd want forks to be okay and everything, just not unauthorized redistribution under the same name. Must I register a trade mark..?
Thanks #Debian for forcing me to think about this sort of stuff! Why can't we just not be assholes #law
@mort What Mozilla used to do this is called a trademark. You have to register it and keep renewing it, which costs money. You also have to sue anybody who infringes it, which costs further money, otherwise you lose it.
@deshipu I guess I'm writing a modified GPL with naming restrictions then, wish me luck
Really though, I think someone who knows the legal environment around FOSS should write variants of existing licenses with naming restrictions. In a world where Debian exists, not restricting the use of your software's name is clearly way too dangerous.
@mort Note that a license only affects people who want to use your code (and only as long as they are not allowed to use your code anyways, for a variety of reasons). It won't stop anyone from writing their own code, or forking some other project, and releasing it under the same name as yours.
@deshipu Yeah, I get that. But the "threat model" here isn't really "someone else writes different software and releases it under the same name as my software", but "Debian takes my source code, breaks it in key ways, and releases it under the same name"
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