Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (280 mails)
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Re: [opensuse-project] License and copyright issues that openSUSE Weekly News team are coming up against now
- From: Sebastian Kügler <sebas@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:54:13 +0100
- Message-id: <201102101254.13354.sebas@kde.org>
On Thursday, February 10, 2011 10:44:01 Satoru Matsumoto wrote:
It is entirely Sascha's prerogative, anyway.
Two things are important here:
- trademark, is Sascha allowed to publish an "openSUSE Wochenrückblick"? This
assumes that there is clarity how to use the trademark, and then if he does
use the openSUSE trademark correctly. Now my understanding is that the
trademark situation is being sorted out, but that there is no clear trademark
policy yet. As Sascha does indeed refer to openSUSE as product and community,
and doesn't use the name for anything else, that's completely fine for all I
know about trademark law.
- copyright, does Sascha have the right to publish content. As you say, it's
originary content, written by himself. He owns the copyright, he decides what
to do about this, and who publishes it. (Note that he put it under a very
friendly license, so the content is actually easily reusable for others.
Now Sascha decides to contribute to both, the englisch openSUSE newsletter,
and a German one, for another medium. In my books, there's nothing wrong with
it, the fact that Sascha does, and has been doing important work for the
openSUSE newsletter does not automatically mandate that he has to do the exact
same for other projects he works on. In fact, I think this exclusive attitide
is very dangerous, because it has this distinct all-or-nothing feeling to it.
Let me share my personal view on this, though. If Sascha decides to move part
of the content to another site, you can do 2 things:
1) try to get him to roll back
2) try to understand why he made this decision
The first option might sound appealing, and like the logical thing to do, the
second one is the one that gives you a handle how things need to be improved.
I've been trying to get more involved with the openSUSE community lately, but
one of the biggest barriers I encountered was a lack of "getting things done"
mentality. It seems as though for many things one wants to do with openSUSE,
many people want to be involved. The problem is that many of those are merely
claiming that they should be involved to be able to participate in
discussions. It smells a bit like "if someone does something, I want to tell
her why". This very much kills any sense of creating something exciting. I
think this attitude of gatekeeping is even at the very heard why openSUSE is
lacking direction, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. The
more this gatekeeper attitude is exercised, the more people are being pushed
away. Ironically, this way of acting supports the very same attitude people
are complaining about. The overhead of having to discuss anything with anybody
is so high, that it will eventually kill any spark of new ideas. So if you
want these to survive, I'd recommend only talking to people that are
a) willing to chip in
b) ignore those that tell them "my way or the highway"
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something
differently or new does a lot of harm to the project, the result is:
1) people with ideas are driven away
2) people with new ideas aren't attracted to begin with
3) many cool things simply do not happen
...and then you end up with the status quo.
--
sebas
http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
If you, as an individual or a part of open-slx, think the much more
polished and specialized newsletter for German openSUSE end users is
needed instead of just a translation of English OWN, you can create it
as you like. That's cool and of course you have the right and freedom to
do so.
However, if you think you are a part of openSUSE project/community, I
hope you will do so as a part of openSUSE, not as a part of open-slx.
Have you discussed this topic enough on -de list or de forums already?
Do most of the people in German community think this is the best (or at
least, the better) solution? If the answer is yes, I don't have a right
to object.
It is entirely Sascha's prerogative, anyway.
Two things are important here:
- trademark, is Sascha allowed to publish an "openSUSE Wochenrückblick"? This
assumes that there is clarity how to use the trademark, and then if he does
use the openSUSE trademark correctly. Now my understanding is that the
trademark situation is being sorted out, but that there is no clear trademark
policy yet. As Sascha does indeed refer to openSUSE as product and community,
and doesn't use the name for anything else, that's completely fine for all I
know about trademark law.
- copyright, does Sascha have the right to publish content. As you say, it's
originary content, written by himself. He owns the copyright, he decides what
to do about this, and who publishes it. (Note that he put it under a very
friendly license, so the content is actually easily reusable for others.
Now Sascha decides to contribute to both, the englisch openSUSE newsletter,
and a German one, for another medium. In my books, there's nothing wrong with
it, the fact that Sascha does, and has been doing important work for the
openSUSE newsletter does not automatically mandate that he has to do the exact
same for other projects he works on. In fact, I think this exclusive attitide
is very dangerous, because it has this distinct all-or-nothing feeling to it.
Let me share my personal view on this, though. If Sascha decides to move part
of the content to another site, you can do 2 things:
1) try to get him to roll back
2) try to understand why he made this decision
The first option might sound appealing, and like the logical thing to do, the
second one is the one that gives you a handle how things need to be improved.
I've been trying to get more involved with the openSUSE community lately, but
one of the biggest barriers I encountered was a lack of "getting things done"
mentality. It seems as though for many things one wants to do with openSUSE,
many people want to be involved. The problem is that many of those are merely
claiming that they should be involved to be able to participate in
discussions. It smells a bit like "if someone does something, I want to tell
her why". This very much kills any sense of creating something exciting. I
think this attitude of gatekeeping is even at the very heard why openSUSE is
lacking direction, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. The
more this gatekeeper attitude is exercised, the more people are being pushed
away. Ironically, this way of acting supports the very same attitude people
are complaining about. The overhead of having to discuss anything with anybody
is so high, that it will eventually kill any spark of new ideas. So if you
want these to survive, I'd recommend only talking to people that are
a) willing to chip in
b) ignore those that tell them "my way or the highway"
It's sad to say, but the amount of stop energy when doing something
differently or new does a lot of harm to the project, the result is:
1) people with ideas are driven away
2) people with new ideas aren't attracted to begin with
3) many cool things simply do not happen
...and then you end up with the status quo.
--
sebas
http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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