On 2011-02-28 Cornelius wrote:
We had a couple of discussions in the past about how to improve the openSUSE trademark guidelines (see e.g. http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines or https://features.opensuse.org/311039). One of the main issues with the current guidelines is that it's very strict about derivatives, and doesn't easily allow people using openSUSE as a base for their own systems, to keep a visible association with openSUSE.
So attached is a proposal how to adapt the trademark guidelines and provide a better solution to this issue. It also contains a few smaller clarifications. It's based on the input I was able to gather from the Wiki, openFATE, mailing lists and some personal feedback. It's a draft, so feedback is welcome.
The only feedback I have is: great work! I love the clarifications on permitted usage of the brand (eg t-shirts, mugs etc for non-commercial use is allowed) and the whole "we provide 'based on openSUSE' branding packages" thing rocks of course. It makes creating a openSUSE deriviate much easier.
The central change is to allow people to create variants of openSUSE and use a "Based on openSUSE" branding under more liberal conditions than now. We would provide a specific branding for that, which keeps the relation to openSUSE, but is done in a way to not be confused with the branding of the official openSUSE distribution. Technically this would be a set of branding packages, which can be used instead of the default branding of the official distribution.
Please let me know, if there is additional feedback on the proposed changes, so we can incorporate that, and then move forward with getting the needed approvals to officially adopt the improved guidelines. In parallel to that we can look into doing the proposed branding packages.
Attached is the proposed text for the revised guidelines, and the diff to the current official version.