On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Christoph Wickert wrote: > Let's face it: ATM the changes have caused confusion and discomfort in > the Fedora community. For example fedora.de has been taken offline > because of discrepancies between the trademark holder and the domain > owner. Robert as the domain owner is a well known and valuable > contributor of the project and all AFAIK all he did was redirecting to > fedoraproject.org. Well, that's more or less correct. I'm the owner of fedora.de since 2005. Before November 2007, the domain was just redirecting to fedoraproject.org. Once static fedoraproject.org sites came up and got translatable, I did this and served a copy of the German static fedoraproject.org sites via the domain fedora.de - I asked the webteam for the "OK", but yes, they are no laywers, too. The pages are slightly modified to technically run on another host and point out that it's just a copy/mirror at the contact page. And they're using German URLs, /mithelfen/ rather /join/ to make things better to remember for German users. In March 2009, I got a very long e-mail by Paul together with a trademark agreement, which is is written in legalese-english. It's a contract, that can be terminated by both sides without any reason and if terminated, the domain in subject has to be transfered to Red Hat. There are lots and lots of paragraphs extending that, and how to use, not being disrespectful etc. But there are also paragraphs, that say, that I've to use TM, (c) and (r) after the first important usage of Fedora and so on. All that are things, the current static pages of fedoraproject.org violates against. Fedora is violating, I have to fix such stuff when serving a slightly modified copy of the pages - a typical broken thing from legal. Another paragraph e.g. is forcing me to put "Official Fedora Project page" link into footer and/or header of each page (note, that translating that string is not allowed). I was pointing out in the past at the contact page that fedora.de is a copy/ mirror and not more, but modifying stuff all the time is inacceptable and indiscutable for me. A single page pointing that out is much enough. As I didn't sign the agreement until now, from the legal perspective, it is safest to take the whole page/site offline, once such a possible trademark violation gets pointed out (according to Paul, the old trademark guidelines forbidd the Fedora logo usage outside of Fedora). Paul luckily understood my situation and is working together with Red Hat Legal in order to solve this issue hopefully. This is now more than one month ago and as far as I know, Paul is currently on vacation until next week or so. Note that all my cognitions and knowledge about the agreement, I'm forced to sign by Red Hat Legal with a deadline, is just from my understanding of the legalese-english document. So I maybe misunderstood things, but I am also still waiting since more than one month for a German understandable translation. Main indention of such a trademark agreement is, that if I tomorrow get a <insert another distribution> user, fedora.de not redirects to them or that I sell the domain away and it is used for other things. Red Hat tries even here to protect the domains and (obviously) doesn't want to take the domain for their own usage, but the agreement is written the wrong way - at least from my point of view. If a Fedora-related domain gets known to people to be Fedora-related (such as me), that is a "status" that should be kept now and in the future, according how I have understood Paul; but not mentioned that way in the agreement (at least I was not able to read it there). Fazit: If you ever register a domain name that uses the trademark name of Fedora inside and make it Fedora Project related, Red Hat Legal forces you to sign that agreement - independent, whether it's a redirect domain or really content such as a community or just mirroring some Fedora stuff... As long as I don't appy and I'm not able to fully understand the trademark agreement, Red Hat Legal wants me to sign, the domains fedora.de and fedora.tel (yes, I am owning that one as well) will stay disabled and/or get not in touch with the Fedora Project. Each day, about 1000 of direct requests to fedora.de will end at a dummy page (& ~ 10000 direct requests per day to fedora.de around and especially after Fedora releases)... I'm really pissed, but still hope that Paul comes up with something soon. Greetings, Robert _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
