[mythtv-users] Trademark Issue with "Packages - MythTV Official Wiki" and the repository is questionable for Debian users

[Eric Sharkey]

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Michael T. Dean
<mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 11/05/2014 09:49 PM, Chuck Peters wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Packages shows Debian packages are available
>> for MythTV.  However the packages are not officially part of Debian [1],
>> and the site which was advertised as Debian Multimedia is known to break
>> libraries for Debian users [2].
>>
>> The MythTV packages page shows the Debian logo and definitely left me
>> with the impression that it was officially part of Debian. It was a
>> trademark violation and the site owner was asked by Debian's project
>> leader Stefano Zacchiroli in 2012 to change the domain name.  I would
>> like to see it corrected on MythTV's site. [3]
>>
>> 1.
>> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-May/026678.html
>> 2.
>> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-April/025867.html
>> 3. https://www.debian.org/trademark
>> When You Can Use the Debian Trademarks Without Asking Permission
>>    1. You can use Debian trademarks to make true factual statements about
>> Debian or communicate compatibility with your product truthfully.
>
>
> I updated the page, changing the text of the site name from the old "Debian
> Multimedia" to the new "deb-multimedia" that the site owner used, and added
> the words "unofficial packages" so that it's clear that they're not blessed
> by systemd, er, I mean Debian.  I left the logo in place because that logo
> indicates that the packages are created for Debian--not to mention the fact
> that http://deb-multimedia.org/ still uses the Debian logo (see the site
> icon - http://deb-multimedia.org/favicon.ico ).

To be excessively pedantic.  This is not "the" Debian logo.  This is
"a" Debian logo.  There are two of them:

https://www.debian.org/logos/index.en.html

Specifically, this is the "open use" Debian logo, which can be used
more liberally than the "restricted use" logo which is reserved for
use for official Debian project uses.  Given that Debian has created
two logos specifically for the purpose of distinguishing "official"
and "unofficial" uses, and the MythTV packages page uses the
unofficial form of the logo, this seems perfectly legitimate to me.

And while I'm on the topic, I don't agree with Stefano Zacchiroli's
statement that deb-multimedia is more harmful than helpful to users.
I've been using those packages for close to a decade and been quite
happy with the results.  The site seems to be very popular with many
Debian end-users.  While there are sometimes compatibility issues,
it's not unheard of for there to be compatibility issues within Debian
proper itself.  (See the recent thread on MobileMyth, for example.)
Nothing is perfect.

Eric