Discover Debian's hassle-free trademarks, use them to promote Debian

March 1st, 2013

The Debian Project is pleased to announce that, according to the terms of the new trademark policy, Debian logos and marks may now be used freely for both non-commercial and commercial purposes. The Debian Project encourages wide use of its marks in all ways that promote Debian and free software.

Stefano Zacchiroli, current Debian Project Leader and one of the main promoters of the new trademark policy, said Software freedoms and trademarks are a difficult match. We all want to see well-known project names used to promote free software, but we cannot risk they will be abused to trick users into downloading proprietary spyware. With the help of SPI and SFLC, we have struck a good balance in our new trademark policy. Among other positive things, it allows all sorts of commercial use; we only recommend clearly informing customers about how much of the sale price will be donated to Debian.

As the arrival of the new stable release, Debian 7.0 Wheezy , approaches, vendors are encouraged to create Wheezy-themed merchandise (t-shirts, stickers, mugs, etc.), using the upcoming release's artwork.

We further invite you to check out the current list of Debian merchandise vendors, and see the information at the bottom of the page if you would like to be added to it.

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system .

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.