# Trademark policy The project name **"FreePDFEditor"**, the wordmark, and the logo are *not* covered by the GPL-3.0-or-later license that applies to the source code. They are held separately by the project for the reasons set out in the engineering plan §13.4. ## Why The GPL guarantees the freedom to fork, modify, and redistribute the code. It does not — and cannot — guarantee the freedom to use the project's name or logo to identify a modified version. Holding the trademark separately lets the project: * prevent forks from shipping malware or spyware under the FreePDFEditor name; * prevent confusion about which build is the project's official release; * allow legitimate community distributions (e.g. Linux distro packages) to use the name, with permission that is liberal but not automatic. ## Policy 1. **Official builds** distributed from `gitea.lm.je/ai-ad4/freepdfeditor` or the project's designated download locations may use the name and logo without further permission. 2. **Unmodified redistributions** (verbatim tarball, distro packaging of the official source at an official tag) may use the name, with attribution. 3. **Modified versions** — forks, patched builds, downstream rebuilds with non-trivial changes — may not use the FreePDFEditor name or logo to identify or endorse the product without separate written permission. Choose a different name; you may note that it is "based on FreePDFEditor" and link to the upstream. 4. **The logo** is not free for generic use. It identifies this project's builds specifically. ## Trademark vs. license This policy does not restrict the rights granted by GPL-3.0-or-later to the source code. It restricts only the use of the trademarks. If in doubt, ask at `trademark@freepdfeditor.org` before publishing.