Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (186 mails)
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Re: [opensuse-project] about the foundation
- From: Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:53:49 +0100
- Message-id: <20111204155349.GE5850@hera>
On 2011-12-04 12:20:02 (+0100), Martin Schlander <martin.schlander@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
That is exactly what the foundation would *NOT* provide anyway
:)
(See, when I talked about ... ;))
Well, a foundation wouldn't really solve much regarding that
anyway. If SUSE drops the project (how likely is that to happen?
none), or if SUSE or Attachmate get a hostile takeover which
ends up in killing the project (not extremely likely to happen
either, let's be realistic and not play paranoia games), how
would a foundation help ?
The foundation would need to own the trademarks to be able to
continue to use the words and logos of openSUSE. That, or a
permanent, non revocable right to use it. From the feedback I
got from Novell at the time, this is not going to happen.
I've explained this a few times already I think, but IMHO, it's
understandable. Trademarks _must_ be enforced, or you lose the
trademark (that is actually part of the legal framework, not
something you can choose to do).
So before SUSE (or Novell, not sure where the trademarks are
atm), hands the trademarks over to an openSUSE foundation, I
believe we should first wait and see whether the foundation
works out well. That is, the right people to run it, attract
enough funding to be sustainable, and not be abused. That would
take a few years to prove a sufficient safety in the first
place.
And then, at that point, we could realistically discuss
transferring the trademarks to the foundation.
As much as I'd like to have an independent non-for-profit
foundation that owns the trademarks, let's be honest, we first
need to make sure that it's on solid grounds and that the
foundation will have the necessary funds or support to enforce
the trademarks in legal battles. If not, then we'd be worse off
than now, _way_ worse.
And then, does that help solving the fact that we would stand
without any infrastructure for OBS, opensuse.org, the forums,
etc... ? No, not really. We'd have to find quite a few sponsors
who'd invest quite a lot of money to be able to have the same
infrastructure as what is provided by SUSE/Novell right now.
And what about the people who are currently on SUSE's payroll to
work 40h/week on openSUSE (and SLE) ? Sure, quite a lot of them
would proably continue to hack on openSUSE outside of their
day jobs, and some of them would probably land at other sponsors
such as B1, but that would still mean a *huge* difference.
Probably not something we could recover from.
But I don't intend to spread any kind of fear, the community
contributes an enormous amount of work in many areas, so
SUSE/Novell/Attachmate definitely has no financial interest in
killing it.
And if some hypothetical big company comes up and buys
Attachmate or SUSE (which isn't quite that simple as most would
think), well, don't you believe they'd do that for the business
value that SUSE provides? In other terms: the revenue?
They would be in the same situation: killing the project or the
community would be a terrible and crazy decision.
In this case, the fact that companies only focus on revenue
plays for us ;)
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser
/\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green
_\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf
wrote:
Søndag den 4. december 2011 11:20:04 skrev Per Jessen:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
On 2011-12-02 11:09:32 (+0100), jdd <jdd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Reading the Pascal platform, I was concerned by his declaration
about foundation. Not to say he's not right :-)
Well it's just my opinion (ok, not just mine), it's definitely
open for debate, and I'm fine being proven wrong :)
The only thing I would really like to see happening is a
discussion about it. I firmly believe it was the right thing to
do at the time where we took that decision, but I'm not
convinced it still is right now: the situation has changed.
How has it changed exactly? We know the ownership of SUSE has changed,
but how is that significant wrt the creation of the openSUSE
foundation?
For me the main attraction of the foundation is that it could ideally provide
some assurance to contributors that the openSUSE project wouldn't just wither
and die, if (god forbid) something nasty (hostile acquisition, bankruptcy,
insane management etc.) should happen to SUSE.
I think those types of concerns are holding quite some people back from using
and contributing to openSUSE.
That is exactly what the foundation would *NOT* provide anyway
:)
(See, when I talked about ... ;))
Well, a foundation wouldn't really solve much regarding that
anyway. If SUSE drops the project (how likely is that to happen?
none), or if SUSE or Attachmate get a hostile takeover which
ends up in killing the project (not extremely likely to happen
either, let's be realistic and not play paranoia games), how
would a foundation help ?
The foundation would need to own the trademarks to be able to
continue to use the words and logos of openSUSE. That, or a
permanent, non revocable right to use it. From the feedback I
got from Novell at the time, this is not going to happen.
I've explained this a few times already I think, but IMHO, it's
understandable. Trademarks _must_ be enforced, or you lose the
trademark (that is actually part of the legal framework, not
something you can choose to do).
So before SUSE (or Novell, not sure where the trademarks are
atm), hands the trademarks over to an openSUSE foundation, I
believe we should first wait and see whether the foundation
works out well. That is, the right people to run it, attract
enough funding to be sustainable, and not be abused. That would
take a few years to prove a sufficient safety in the first
place.
And then, at that point, we could realistically discuss
transferring the trademarks to the foundation.
As much as I'd like to have an independent non-for-profit
foundation that owns the trademarks, let's be honest, we first
need to make sure that it's on solid grounds and that the
foundation will have the necessary funds or support to enforce
the trademarks in legal battles. If not, then we'd be worse off
than now, _way_ worse.
And then, does that help solving the fact that we would stand
without any infrastructure for OBS, opensuse.org, the forums,
etc... ? No, not really. We'd have to find quite a few sponsors
who'd invest quite a lot of money to be able to have the same
infrastructure as what is provided by SUSE/Novell right now.
And what about the people who are currently on SUSE's payroll to
work 40h/week on openSUSE (and SLE) ? Sure, quite a lot of them
would proably continue to hack on openSUSE outside of their
day jobs, and some of them would probably land at other sponsors
such as B1, but that would still mean a *huge* difference.
Probably not something we could recover from.
But I don't intend to spread any kind of fear, the community
contributes an enormous amount of work in many areas, so
SUSE/Novell/Attachmate definitely has no financial interest in
killing it.
And if some hypothetical big company comes up and buys
Attachmate or SUSE (which isn't quite that simple as most would
think), well, don't you believe they'd do that for the business
value that SUSE provides? In other terms: the revenue?
They would be in the same situation: killing the project or the
community would be a terrible and crazy decision.
In this case, the fact that companies only focus on revenue
plays for us ;)
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser
/\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green
_\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf
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