Sorry for not replying sooner, to confirm/discuss. I'll write what I'm planning on bringing to the Board as a summary at the end. On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 09:17:55AM -0500, inode0 wrote: > On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 12:53 AM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > At today's Board Meeting there was discussion of Fedora's trademark policy > > and how it applies to various products that are produced by Fedora > > Contributors and third parties. Some of the perceptions from the meeting > > (note, this is *not* a complete list of perceptions. It may be one-sided. > > If other attendees of the meeting wish to add to this, they sho9uld speak > > up. If non-attendees to the meeting wish to add to this they should also > > speak up.): > > > > * The trademark policy allows third parties to create Fedora Images that > > consist solely of software in Fedora for use in cloud hosted providers > > without explicitly asking for permission to use the trademark. > > My layman's reading of the guidelines and the confusion expressed over > the meaning of the guidelines in another recent thread makes me wonder > if this is true or whether there has just not been any enforcement of > the actual guidelines in these cases. > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#Virtual_images_or_appliances_with_unmodified_Fedora_software > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#Virtual_images_or_appliances_with_combinations_of_Fedora_software_with_non-Fedora_or_modified_Fedora_software > > I guess which interpretation is correct hinges on the definition of > unmodified Fedora software. Question #1 to legal should be whether the > currect practice of such providers is actually in compliance with the > existing guidelines or not. > <nod> I agree here. I should have stated this clearer as "many people take this to mean that..." I'm going to bring this to the Board as: Ask legal whether, under the current guidelines are cloud providers allowed to host Fedora images without going through explicit trademark approval by the board? The assumption is that the images only contain Fedora software but may have had *configuration* modified in expected ways to work with the hardware or environment that the providers have. > > * This is a good thing as pushing for explicit licensing would simply poison > > our own well. ie: we want people to be able to install Fedora on their > > cloud hosts. If we make the cloud providers go through the same rigorous > > approval process that we demand of "official" Fedora images, we'd quickly > > lose support. > > Agreed. > > > * The process for Fedora Contributors to be approved to use the trademark > > for their spins is quite a bit more onerous than this. It's a quite hefty > > review by several different groups within Fedora whose criteria for > > judging are not written down. > > * Various people have ideas of how we can change the trademark guidelines > > but We don't know what is needed in order to "defend the trademark" from > > a legal standpoint so we can't actually approve any of those changes. > > I think there is a secondary issue here that needs to be given > consideration too. Aside from any trademark implications of a change > there will also be brand considerations. Any loosening of the > requirements, especially any broad loosening of them, will result in > the Fedora brand being diluted. I don't really have a firm opinion on > whether we should allow dilution or how much might be allowed without > overly harming the brand but I do know in the past a lot of effort has > been expended to create the brand so some careful thought about the > implications here should be made if for no other reason than to show > respect to those who have worked so hard to create the brand in the > past. > <nod> I think this is the central issue that the Board needs to consider (rather than Legal). For me, personally, I want the fedora brand to represent a community that is easy to contribute to in order to satisfy one's needs. I think that we're currently far in a different direction, applying the brand to the high quality of specific products that we release. There are other methods to solve this; for instance, splitting the brand by renaming the project (or products). Some people have privately proposed to me using the secondary marks for *all* products of Fedora which would have this effect, for instance. > > So we're soliciting input here for questions that we need to pose to Legal > > in order to compose a new policy and input on what changes we'd like to make > > to the policy we have. > > > > One proposal from the meeting that we'll need to find out if Legal would > > approve is: > > > > "if the image consists solely of software from Fedora it can use the Fedora > > marks without explicit review and approval from the Board" and the Board > > would forgo explicit review of images in those cases. (images == spins/AMI > > images/etc) > > So we aren't just talking about virtual images or appliances here, right? > Correct. > Bob in his basement can concoct some strange brew of bits from the > Fedora repositories and distribute it as "Fedora" in this world? > If legal passes it and the Board approved it in exactly that sense. If I were just trying to right the imbalance that I see in what third parties are allowed to do vs we allow members of the project to do, I'd base this on Fedora Contributors being allowed to do this. A definition of Fedora Contributor was hard to come up within the course of the last meeting, however :-). > Or is this only with respect to "cloud providers" or some subset of > the universe of people/businesses brewing up Fedora based content? > I'd very much like to avoid a subset that includes third-parties and excludes Fedora Contributors. A subset that included Fedora Contributors would probably be okay to me, though. > I'm very sympathetic to part of the motivation here to reduce > roadblocks and frustration to some within the Fedora community who > have been and are still being negatively impacted by "process." I > don't know if legal needs to even be involved in what I'm about to > suggest or whether the Board could just do it but two situations it > seems to me could be settled by the Board granting trademark use to > two existing groups who I think have demonstrated both competence in > their work and in having a healthy respect for the Fedora Project and > brand. > > So, can the Board just grant permission to use the trademarks to the > Cloud SIG community so it can go about the business of creating Fedora > images that are recognized as "official" images without following the > currently impossible to follow processes in place? Whether or not > providers of such images outside the Fedora Project are in compliance > with the guidelines or not this would at the very least put the Cloud > SIG on an equal playing field with them and would remove hurdles that > are currently impossible to cross. > > Can the Board also grant permission to use trademarks explicitly to > the Fedora Unity Re-spin community to clear up any potential issues > that might exist with respect to the re-spins they produce? They are > long-time members of the Fedora community and have now a long track > record of quality work which also shows respect for the Fedora brand. > Going to bring this up as: Can the Board grant ongoing usage of the trademark to subgroups of Fedora contributors and not explicitly review their work on an ongoing basis? (For instance, images produced by the Cloud SIG, the Fedora Unity Re-spin community, and rel-eng) -Toshio
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