On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 5:39 PM Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@inai.de> wrote:
On Monday 2019-06-03 10:35, Richard Brown wrote:
From my point of view, there a number of benefits of renaming the openSUSE Project [...] Trademarks are only enforceable if they're considered unique.
Pipe dream: Have the foundation own the trademark and sublicense it to SUSE Linux GmbH. Probably won't work, but at least the thought was expressed.
This is actually probably the only workable way to keep the openSUSE name. I mentioned this several levels upthread, though I forgot to cite examples in which this is done. As Stasiek and Richard know, I also mentioned this at oSC, though it was also outright dismissed then too. An example in which this has been done recently is actually with the Ziff Davis name and trademark. The Ziff Davis name, for a brief time, was actually maintained by a brand entity and was licensed to Ziff Davis Media and Ziff Davis Enterprise, two different companies with two different sets of websites. The two companies had originally been one company, and they'd split in two. ZDE failed, and was sold, so the ZDE name is no longer in use, but this had been a system used before. Another example in which this occurs is in American telecommunications, where the Cellular ONE brand and name is actually used by multiple companies that aren't related to each other other than licensing the brand. There are a few cellular service providers who do business with this brand name even though they hold no ancestry or relation to the company who owns the brand.
Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?
("its", please.)
.. I would not mind a name change. The real long-timers already incurred a name change, so to speak, from SUSE to openSUSE, and, in a limited sense, again from openSUSE to Leap. One need not agree with the board, but judging from the Oak-vs-Leap decision at the time, they seem quite mindful as to what they decide. It is the one place where I feel representative democracy works.
The project's focus is technical ("best platform for developers" or so I remember someone from, I think, a Czech member), so the hope is that the project will be judged by that and not so much by its name. (Think "What's in a name?" / "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet".)
The *SUSE distributions have, over time, grown some "misnormers" in specific areas, which lend itself to a potential new mascot (if such should be needed in the course of actions):
- the SUSE mascot "Geeko", a chameleon, oddly makes a reference with its name to quite a different suborder of reptilia: geckos.
- the isolinux/grub bootloader implementation on the openSUSE ISOs features the filename "kroete.dat", German for the class of frog/toad amphibia, so not even chameleon/gecko reptilia.
All I'd ask for is keeping some element, such as the chameleon, the gecko, the secret amphibic identity, or the letter "S", that'd be great; furthermore, a must-have is the primary colour "green" (in one of its many shades anyway).
[As for Stasiek's contrast concern, #000000 works better with #73ba25 than #ffffff does, says that contrast-ratio.com website ;-) ]
Man... SUSE's identity confusion goes deeper than I had thought! It's funny that slightly tweaking from a chameleon to a gecko would actually add so much harmony to the brand... -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org