[IAEP] Scratch license

[Pamela Jones]

Might I suggest that you contact the Software Freedom Law Center? They 
do stuff like this precisely.  Trying to do a license without a lawyer 
these days is like pinning a bull's eye on your project.

PJ

Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
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> Hi Tom, Bill and others,
> 
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:34:28PM -0500, Tom Hoffman wrote:
>> Scratch is, or should be a trademark.
> 
> [details snipped]
> 
>> Mozilla has very strict terms for trademark use -- so much so that it
>> is called Iceweasel in Debian:
>> http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/
>>
>> I suspect Scratch would want to find some language which says "you may
>> only call this Scratch if you have not modified the source."
>> Ultimately, IANAL, and I don't know *exactly* how to do it, but it is
>> in this ballpark.
> 
> To me, this seems like a good approach to protect the _branding_ value 
> of your marvellous product, while allowing uncontrolled growth - which 
> includes the risk of forks.
> 
> Through this similar dilemma I now much better understand the 
> "hysterical" trademark standpoint of Mozilla.
> 
> 
> Earlier, Mitch Resnick wrote (proxied by Bill Kerr):
>> We don't have any problem allowing commercial use of the Scratch binary 
>> (and are planning to update the license accordingly). But several 
>> people in our group have reservations about allowing commercial use of 
>> the Scratch source code. One main reason: We are concerned about 
>> multiple forks that could be confusing to users. We have put a lot of 
>> effort into building an online community around Scratch, so we don't 
>> want the community to fragment. Also, Scratch is based on some core 
>> educational ideas, and we are worried that alternate versions might not 
>> be consistent with these educational ideas, thus muddying the 
>> educational message underlying Scratch.
>>
>> Our current thinking is to create our own Linux version of Scratch, and 
>> then allow commercial use of the source (since we feel that there will 
>> be less reason for people to make forks, once we have create an 
>> "official" Linux version of Scratch).
>>
>> But, as I said, we're not sure about this reasoning. We'd be interested 
>> to hear your opinion. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions?
> 
> I welcome this approach, and have no better idea to solve the dilemma.
> 
> It would certainly be better in my opinion if you could see the benefit 
> of more widespread distribution of Scratch as outweighing the danger of 
> loosing touch (or control) with your users. But I respect if your 
> judgement on this.
> 
> 
>   - Jonas
> 
> Debian developer
> 
> 
> - -- 
> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
> * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
> 
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