On 6/5/19 9:51 AM, Richard Brown wrote:
On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 15:04, Robert Schweikert
wrote: The name of the Project, the name of the Foundation, are supplementary discussions that spawn from that, and the Trademark issues are not things to be ignored or brushed over lightly. The harsh realities of trademark law will shape and impact what the Project will be able to do as a Foundation.
Fair, then go get the facts from SUSE and stop the speculation, that's part of your job isn't it.
and I've got 'the facts from SUSE' - you and most of the people on this list know me, and my default setting of community first. It should be obvious to anyone who knows me at all that my advocacy for addressing this issue, and all the issues I raise, are entirely informed by information I've received as part of my job.
Hmm, from [1] """ Talking speculatively, based on casual conversations and no legal advice (yet), my personal expectation is that if the Project decides to keep operating under the name "openSUSE", then there is no way the Project will ever own the Trademark around the Project. While I'm confident SUSE will do all it can to support openSUSE in this area, we will all likely be limited in what we can do in the areas of naming, trademarks, sub-projects, domains, etc, as a result. """ While my gut feel would be that your speculation is spot on, it remains a speculation. From [2] """ If openSUSE keeps its current name, I would be absolutely shocked if we manage the form the Foundation under the name "openSUSE" without significant additional restrictions atop of the status quo. """ I think the wording speaks for itself. This is your opinion and not fact that has been passed on by SUSE Legal. All of this leads to speculation by others and muddies the waters as to what we should or should not focus on to form an opinion. If we would know that there will be additional restrictions then the nature of those should be brought forward and we can have a constructive discussion about whether those will be a hindrance to what we want to achieve or not.
The only reason I qualify all of my remarks with words like "should", "possibly" and other qualifiers is because we have strong commitments from SUSE that they will do everything they can to help openSUSE regardless of it's decisions.
So we have the luxury of this discussion not being under undue pressure from our corporate sponsor. And thusly, we can all discuss this frankly as community members with my 'communication of SUSE's interests' being part of my regular, relaxed way of conducting myself in the community.
But please don't mistake that casual nature as neglecting my responsibilities. And even if you do, please refrain from publicly questioning my commitment to my work duties in the future. Not only do I find that behaviour unprofessional, > but it sure makes it harder to do my job.
There's no ulterior motive in bringing this up for discussion now, but if we don't discuss it now, it will be too late to consider those implications once we've started signing contracts and forming legal entities.
if we keep the name, we'll have the challenges of figuring out how to operate a legal entity without absolute control of our trademark.
True, but that is not a stated goal of the foundation, you just said that yourself above. So maybe a bit consistency would be helpful.
If control of the mark is important then that should be stated as a goal of the foundation. Which then pretty much ends the discussion as we all agree that in order to control the mark a re-name is necessary.
It's not a stated goal. Because it isn't a goal.
But, its an environmental reality, trademarks are a thing, openSUSE has one, and we need to figure out how we're going to handle it.
Fair enough, following the discussion one could surmise that there is a reasonably large group of the community that appears to think that control of the mark is important. This may or may not warrant to revisit the goal statement and maybe re-frame the discussion to address what one could consider to be the underlying question to the initial "Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?" question. Is control of the mark important? How important is it? If the answers are "Yes", and "Very" then the question from [1] answers itself.
Having a trademark & product name separate from the primary legal entity is possible - see The Document Foundation and Libreoffice
But, at the same time, such an arrangement can be seen to be highly problematic - with other prominent sponsors of Libreoffice including corporate entities like Collabora, the TDF/Libreoffice/Collabora relationship is a complex one which generates tensions from time to time.
"Who is in charge of Libreoffice?" can be an awkward question, which can lead to complex situations when it comes to the very sponsorship and contract signing goals we seek to solve with our Foundation.
With SUSE continuing to be a close sponsor of openSUSE, we run risks of similar complexity. I'd personally prefer that openSUSE avoids such a complex arrangement. I'm a strong advocate that the Foundation should be the primary legal representation of the Project, and should share the name with the Project.
"Who is in charge of openSUSE?" should be easily answered with "The openSUSE community, represented legally by the openSUSE Foundation". Anything else just hinders the ability of the Foundation to be able to do it's business and to be broadly seen as the authoritative entity behind this community.
And while many of the points I have risen in this thread suggest such clarity will be easier to achieve with a name other than openSUSE, I'm not suggesting that it is the only way forward. As I've stated repeatedly, I do believe we might be able to come up with a satisfactory arrangement with the current name and Trademark.
But it _will_ be a heck of a large amount of work, for at least, the Board, SUSE, myself and probably a good chunk of other people too.
So if we go down that road, those people are going to need to be absolutely sure it's what the community want, and that the collective decision was a well informed one.
And for that it would sure be nice to remove any speculation around the mark itself. What we know for certain is that a re-name will provide complete control of the mark. It also affords perceived protections from certain risks pointed out be Pierre. Again leads to me the questions: - Is the control important to us? - How important is it? We also know that as it stands we have a trademark policy [3] that reflects restrictions we have today based on the mark being owned by SUSE. What we don't know, and what from my point of view is a big part of the speculation that is happening, is whether or not there would be additional restrictions if/when there is a Foundation. How can we expected to make an "informed" decision when significant parts of the subject that is being discussed are unknown? Wouldn't we need to know if there will be any additional restriction and what they are/would be in order to make a decision about whether or not we are willing to accept them? Later, Robert [1] https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2019-06/msg00003.html [2] https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2019-06/msg00012.html [3] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines -- 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