On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 11:23:35AM -0400, David Nalley wrote: > On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 2:37 AM, Christoph Wickert > > > > I hereby ask the board to > > 1. appoint SIGs responsible for various trademark approvals > > 2. contact these SIGs and ask them to come up with a list of items > > or a SOP for approval > > 3. supervise and coordinate the creation of the checklists/SOPs > > 4. collect the answers from the SIGs and put them into the wiki > > 5. clarify the relationship of this proposal and the media handout > > requirements. According to Jared they would replace the media > > handout requirements > > 6. clarify the scope of the new policy. While the old media handout > > requirements only covered physical media for distribution and > > had nothing to do with the spins process this new policy only > > deals with what exactly? For example I am sure we want to > > involve the design team for media for distribution, but I don't > > think they need to approve a spin that has no artwork other than > > the one on the spins page. > > > > Note: The board's trac is only open for board members and individual > > tickets are visible for the people who filed them. This being said I > > wonder if it is really the right place for a transparent process like a > > trademark approval. > > > > Hi Christoph, > > Let me first apologize for the large amount of silence that has > followed this email. > > I have been thinking a lot about the policies around trademarks, spin > approval, media handout, etc of late. And sadly I think we've done it > wrong. (I am a guilty party here too I should note.) > > I fear we (and I am part of that we) have erected a process around > getting things done and that process is overly onerous to the point of > the process largely be ignored or alternatively being such a stumbling > block that things fail to happen. > > To provide some anecdotal information, I look at how Linode had Fedora > 15 images up and ready to be deployed 2 days after release[0], they > didn't ask our permission (and didn't need to, there are exceptions in > the Fedora trademark guidelines that allow them to call it Fedora, > even use the logos, provided it contains only Fedora software.) didn't > ask for our help, etc. I contrast that with the EC2 work that Fedora > has been trying to do internally, and realize that if the work had > been done by Amazon or anyone else that they could have skipped > RelEng, QA, Design, and Board approval, and uploaded Fedora 15 AMIs, > called them Fedora, used the logos, etc provided they only used Fedora > software in the AMI. Instead, there are no 'official' Fedora 15 AMIs > yet, and we are 2+ months down the road. It's not a technical problem > that's blocking this. (I know because I am using a Cloud-SIG generated > AMI for Fedora 15 on EC2, it's just not 'official') > > Admittedly the Virtual Images and Appliances exception is far broader > than the other exceptions in the guidelines. > > That's led me to this bit of thinking: It should NEVER be harder to > get things done inside of Fedora than it is to get the same things > done outside Fedora. > > Are things going to be perfect?? No, but they aren't perfect now. We > have a process in place that people either actively flout or they > become bogged down trying to comply with and fail to get anything > done. > > I know I am not directly responding to your questions, but I wonder if > our approach in general isn't flawed. > > Thoughts, comments, flames, welcome :) > Thought #1 we're going off on a tangent from what Cristoph asked. Which is both good and bad. Good because I largely agree with your characterization of the current process. Bad because we could potentially get sucked down a rabbit hole of discussion just like when we tried to come up with the policy that turned into the current policy. So here's a few brief thoughts on the two ways we can proceed: 1) Answer cristoph's questions, get this creaky, crotchety thing moving. To do that, we need to have one or more members of the Board do the work to make it happen. They need to start assigning deadlines and if the deadlines aren't met, consequences that allow the spins and images to be created at the expense of skipping some approval checks this time around. Getting this done may well require someone to actually like the current guidelines enough to take it and run with it. 2) Revamp the spins process. The last time we discussed this, I said that the trademark approval was not where I'd like to have these sorts of approvals. Trademark should hinge on the smallest subset of actual legal requirments and "is it made solely from Fedora packages"? The questions of approval that are raised here should instead be handled by the spins sig as part of parcelling out limited resources. We have limited resources in terms of hosting space, CPU, bandwidth, and people time. We should help the spins sig talk to the right people about what limitations exist but the spins sig should be able to by and large parcel out the identified resources as they see fit. Doing this is going to depend on our tolerance for re-opening this decision and reexamining it. I think the current trademark approval guidelines were created in an attempt to place a higher value on the products that the Fedora Project creates but for me personally, they swing the balance too far. They value product more than people. We want to make it so that people who want a polished Fedora Product are able to create that but we also need to give other people with other priorities the ability to make something that fits their needs every release as well. -Toshio
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