But if you’re a developer, that doesn’t change that many users do not understand, will not understand, and will open bug reports regularly.
When that happens, guess what you do? You trademark your software’s name and use the law to force distributions to not package unless concessions are granted. We’re beginning to see this with OBS, but Firefox also did this for a while.
As Fedora quickly found, when trademark law gets involved, any hope of forcing developers to allow packaging through a policy or opinion vote becomes hilariously, comically ineffectual.
The other alternative is to just not support Linux. Almost all major software has been happily taking that path, and the whole packaging mess gives no incentive to change.
> You trademark your software’s name and use the law to force distributions to not package unless concessions are granted.
It isn't clear if this behaviour is legally enforceable. Distributions typically try to avoid the conflict. But they could argue that "we modified Firefox to meet our standards and here is the result" is a legally permitted use of that trademark. To my knowledge, this has never been tested.
When that happens, guess what you do? You trademark your software’s name and use the law to force distributions to not package unless concessions are granted. We’re beginning to see this with OBS, but Firefox also did this for a while.
As Fedora quickly found, when trademark law gets involved, any hope of forcing developers to allow packaging through a policy or opinion vote becomes hilariously, comically ineffectual.
The other alternative is to just not support Linux. Almost all major software has been happily taking that path, and the whole packaging mess gives no incentive to change.