Hi, On 10/2/19 7:37 AM, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
On Wed 2019-10-02, Michal Kubecek wrote:
Personally, I can see more similarities [with the Brexit vote] than I feel comfortable with.
When the topic came up on my first board meeting (in August), the Brexit voting process is an example I used as something to not repeat, indeed.
I, too, feel a bit uncomfortable, and I, too, hope that the vote will be "no change of name". I see your point, and Henne's, and at least as importantly the value of an existing brand. To me the potential benefits of changing thename appear moderate in comparison, if not speculative. But let's see.
Of course, there is another difference: if it all comes to the worst and the result of the vote is "change", Board could simply make a popularity contest and choose the name with most votes even if majority of voters (and users) would in fact dislike that name. But that is hardly reassuring...
If it comes to that, constructing the ballot is going to be non-trivial and hugely important.
Yes, especially since we continue to co-mingle different tangentially related topics. We continue to mix foundation name, project name, and "product name" where "product name" is probably the least defined up in the same conversation. Foundation name: There is no objective data that shows that foundation_name not in [ project_name, product_name ] is really bad for collecting money from sponsors. And collecting money from sponsors is what the foundation is supposed to be about, if I remember the discussion around this in the oSC YouTube video correctly. The bottom line appears to me to provide a legal entity so we can get money from sponsors and the money does not have to traverse through the SUSE accounting system. Project name: While the use of "openSUSE Project" has trademark implications, as such we have been able to use the name for a long time and while IANAL I would haphazard the guess that SUSE has long lost the opportunity to strip the openSUSE name in this respect as to lack of prior enforcement. Product name: If we define our products to be the distributions then we have "openSUSE Leap" and "openSUSE Tumbleweed". In this case the life span of these names is relatively short, thus if "the lack of enforcement" would apply to he product and SUSE could force the re-naming of these products is a question others will have to answer. Trademarks: This is even farther removed w.r.t. the naming question and revolves around trademark use approval and the work the board has w.r.t. this topic. This is where the trademark ownership topic comes into play most prominently. This is also all about marketing and being known. Which is where the project has traditionally lacked the most w.r.t. people extending effort. Each of these topics is quite complex with potential implications on the others. None of the the topics, probably with the exception of the trademark ownership, have been discussed in a focused discussion with more or less objective weighing of the pros and cons. And now for some reason there appears to be the believe that we can cast these complex topics into a single yes/no ballot question. Sorry, IMHO that does not do the complexity of the topic justice nor should we, IMHO, expect any tangible useful information out of that vote. Or stated in another way, having one yes/no vote that intermingles these complex topics is insane. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Distinguished Architect LINUX Technical Team Lead Public Cloud rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org