On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:05 PM, Tom Callaway <tcallawa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 03/29/2012 01:08 PM, inode0 wrote: > >> My feathers are admittedly ruffled because I find it absurd that the >> work that we have done for years is resulting in our being singled out >> as a group that needs to be micro-managed by Fedora Legal. I'm sure >> that isn't the perspective of Fedora Legal, at least I hope it isn't. >> But I have not been given any reasonable justification for treating >> Ambassadors this way and no one else. > > Sometimes I'm rather stunned at how people jump to the conclusion that > they're being singled out as victims. So let me explain why I think folks are irked at all of this. Contributors, mostly Ambassadors, have for many years been producing Fedora swag. They've often times been cited for the higher-quality, less expensive swag by the Red Hat-employed Fedora leadership. They've been inherently trusted, and even encouraged to take on that role by that same Red Hat-employed Fedora leadership (speaking corporately, not of a single individual). None of this was done in an effort to subvert RHT control of it's marks, or to cause problems, but rather with the urging of folks inside Red Hat. This isn't to say that everything has been perfect, there's certainly been problem swag, but the same could be said of Red Hat-produced Fedora (and Red Hat for that matter) swag as well. Now, the trademark guidelines seek to solve some 'problems' - which are listed as: * RHT can't let anyone do what they want - inappropriate things might happen like Fedora-logoed condoms. * RHT has to control quality - we can't have sloppy swag ruining the Fedora mark's good name. What that really gets interpreted as is: RHT thinks that Fedora contributors a) don't care about, and can't be trusted with the Fedora brand and would engage in activities that would sully it's reputation. b) RHT thinks that there are currently problems that are so egregious with what we are doing now that they must be fixed despite the fact that it's been going on with few complaints for many years. I despise the use of analogies in such situations, but sadly I don't have the wit of Konstantin Ryabitsev [0], so, lets s/swag/packages/g: Despite the fact that the Fedora packagers have been producing generally good quality packages for years, Red Hat has decided that to control quality, package reviews must be performed by specially anointed Red Hat employees. Otherwise we might have packages that are of poor quality, or that are clearly inappropriate and sully the Fedora brand. So rather than a legal issue this is viewed by folks as being told that they are clearly doing such a poor job that very well paid and busy lawyers and engineering managers see it as worthy of spending copious amounts of time solving what clearly must be a terrible situation (the quality issue continues to be mentioned, as well as things that would reflect poorly upon Fedora like logoed condoms). How about this: Red Hat acknowledges that Fedora contributors are generally not idiots, generally have Fedora's best interest at heart and we want to make sure they can get things done in the furtherance of Fedora's goals. At the same time we have a desire to protect the Fedora marks, and sadly the trademark system is ill equipped to deal with such an open source project. Here's what we have to do to satisfy both ends: Red Hat will assume no mental defect, and no malice - you've been doing awesome work for years, but we need to be notified when approved swag is manufactured. We also trust that you won't hand out defective, low quality swag, and would alert us and the rest of the community to such problems. We also generally trust your judgement for what kind swag to produce, but we need to be able to demonstrate that we have some control, so please notify us in advance before new designs are registered. We request that you give us two days notice. If you don't hear back from us in that time period, consider that tacit consent, though we will try and at least ACK your request, but do understand that however unlikely, we can veto the design. (though we'll try and assist you in rectifying the design to comply with usage guidelines) That's essentially the same work flow, except it a) defaults to trusting contributors; and b) puts the onus on RHT for vetoing designs rather than having the onus on contributors to gain RHT's blessing. --David [0] http://lwn.net/Articles/83360/ _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
