Announcement About the Debian Trademark

March 6th, 1998

Debian's goal is to be fair to all businesses. Part of that is not giving one business an advantage over another.

We allow all businesses to make reasonable use of the "Debian" trademark. For example, if you make a CD of our Debian GNU/Linux distribution, you can call that product "Debian". If you want to use the name in some other way, you should ask us first.

To be fair to all businesses, we insist that no business use the name "Debian" in the name of the business, or a domain name of the business.

A few times well-meaning people have called us just a bit too late to keep them from losing a few hundred dollars and some time and being disappointed. In all cases these people have meant well, and have approached us with gifts in hand, and it is a shame to disappoint them. Hopefully, this warning will protect the next person.