Post #1724007
2026-03-31 20:49 UTC
@organicmaps
rebranding is seperate from attribution. attribution is important, but attribution is not the issue here. It's fair and reasonable to require attribution, but rebranding is an expected result of forks and downstream projects
free licenses permit the licenser to restrict the use of their name and logo as long as it doesn't practically limit the four freedoms, however the inverse, requiring derivitives to include your branding is a violation of the freedom to modify or redistribute modified copies. a core tenant of the freedom to redistribute, with or without modification, is the right to do so without permission. requiring the user to seek your conditional permission to perform a modification is a violation of freedom 3, making it not free
@opensourceopenmind @manankanchu
Replies (1)
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@organicmaps@fosstodon.org 2026-04-06 06:08
@memoria @opensourceopenmind @manankanchu looks like you’ve mixed it up. Attribution = mention the project = following the license terms. Skipping attribution without explicit permission = violating the license. Anyone can take binary maps or other files and use them for whatever needs, by following the license terms. Do Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap.org allow removing their attribution and full rebranding as a different product?