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> Trademarks can be involved as well: e.g. you cannot resell Firefox and still call it Firefox.

This shouldn't be an issue here, as they've changed the names. They, e.g., sell Scribus as "Desktop Publishing Studio".




In case you weren't paying attention, the branding was only changed in the Amazon listing and maybe the physical packaging: I haven't bought any of those, but considering that they just blurred / cut the window names from those screenshots, I assume they didn't do anything else.

Branding an application with a different name (i.e. removing all references to the old name from the code-base) takes effort and it's not just a matter of changing the main window title. Just ask the Debian people that rebranded Firefox to IceWeasel.


>Just ask the Debian people that rebranded Firefox to IceWeasel.

Or the people who rebrand redhat as centos for that matter. I bet it takes a little more than a find-and-replace-in-project.


If you don't modify anything, you can still sell it, right? Take firefox for example - i thought Mozilla was objecting to the additions & changes.


Depends on the trademark licensing available of course.

In case of Firefox: no, you cannot sell it without written permission while branded as "Firefox".

From http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html ...

      You can't put the Mozilla Mark(s) on anything that you 
      produce commercially (whether or not you make a profit) -- 
      at least not without receiving Mozilla's written permission. 
But what you can do:

      distribute unchanged Mozilla product(s) (code + config) for 
      each platform downloaded from www.mozilla.com 
      or www.mozilla.org as long as you distribute them 
      without charge
And the reasoning for this, as explained:

     In addition, on an all too frequent basis, we receive 
     reports about websites selling the Mozilla Firefox browser, 
     using the Mozilla Marks to promote other products and 
     services, or using modified versions of the Mozilla Marks. 
     The problem with these activities is that they may be 
     deceptive, harm users, cause consumer confusion, and 
     jeopardize the identity and meaning of the Mozilla Marks.
Of course, many open-source projects don't even have registered trademarks, but (I am not a layer so take this as an opinion) ... even unregistered trademarks are protected and I think you can still sue successfully somebody if it brings harm to the project's image.




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