The first basic principle of trademark law in general is that if the use isn't understood by a casual observer [1] to imply endorsement, then trademark protection doesn't apply to that use. Forking the repository to develop a bug fix is the kind of use that's not even going to cross that threshold, so the policy doesn't need to explicitly cover it (although I wouldn't be opposed to firming up the text).
The proposed fix, however, is completely bonkers insane. It basically allows any fork to modify whatever the hell they want and still use the trademark with impunity--i.e., under this policy, something like Devuan could use all of Debian's trademarks because it's "just" a derived work of Debian that strips out all of systemd.
From most of the other points, the author seems to be completely unaware of the legal concept of nominative fair use. It is always possible for someone to use a trademark, without permission of the trademark owner, to actually refer to the good in question. You can always use "Rust" to refer to the programming language supported by the Rust compiler, no matter what the trademark policy says, because that's just how IP law works.
[1] The UK test uses a more poignant phrase: "a moron in a hurry".
The author doesn't know their stuff, and is speaking with inappropriate authority and hubris. I wonder if that's what they do on other topics besides trademark law.
The first basic principle of trademark law in general is that if the use isn't understood by a casual observer [1] to imply endorsement, then trademark protection doesn't apply to that use. Forking the repository to develop a bug fix is the kind of use that's not even going to cross that threshold, so the policy doesn't need to explicitly cover it (although I wouldn't be opposed to firming up the text).
The proposed fix, however, is completely bonkers insane. It basically allows any fork to modify whatever the hell they want and still use the trademark with impunity--i.e., under this policy, something like Devuan could use all of Debian's trademarks because it's "just" a derived work of Debian that strips out all of systemd.
From most of the other points, the author seems to be completely unaware of the legal concept of nominative fair use. It is always possible for someone to use a trademark, without permission of the trademark owner, to actually refer to the good in question. You can always use "Rust" to refer to the programming language supported by the Rust compiler, no matter what the trademark policy says, because that's just how IP law works.
[1] The UK test uses a more poignant phrase: "a moron in a hurry".