Op maandag 3 juni 2019 10:33:12 CEST schreef Ancor Gonzalez Sosa:

On 6/3/19 8:01 AM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

...

Hi,

I am myself afraid of this email, because this is about the basis of the community, distributions, plans for foundation etc...

Unlike I usually do, I will keep it short.

...

More important than the name itself however is to decide if we want to change the logo and/or the name at all, or we want to leave everything as is.

I wouldn't change the name. I wouldn't destroy a brand just because is similar to SUSE. In fact, I believe the distance between SUSE (the company) and openSUSE (the project) is properly represented by the distance between both names/words (different enough but with 50% of shared DNA/letters).

I'm all for changing the logo. Both logos are basically identical and the openSUSE logo needs to be adapted to the present times. Whether SUSE decides to modernize their logo or not is not our business, but I think openSUSE needs to do so.

Cheers. Personally, I'm with Anchor here. On both matters. Albeit, that I could see and openSUSE Foundation, where the distro names would be reduced from openSUSE Leap -> Leap and openSUSE Tumbleweed -> Tumbleweed.

Having said that, I also think all this should be a community decision. And we may need some time discussing our options / ideas / opinions. About capitalization: This is different in various languages, journalistic writing rules etc. F.e. dutch rules prescribe capitalization at the beginning of a sentence, some EN speaking countries do as well. Had to find out myself two years ago when co-writing an article in the dutch c't. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Richard Brown wrote:

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

I say no. As long as we remain tightly coupled to SUSE, there is nothing gained by changing. If anything, it would only add confusion. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.2°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:34, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

SUSE owns the trademark and the names and as holder they can allow "us" the use of the name.

While this is true, as openSUSE transitions to having it's own legal entity, you should consider the possibility that such a grant of trademark use could have significantly limiting strings attached. Even without a legal entity, openSUSE already operates with significant constraints around the use of its name, which you can see in our Trademark Policy [1] and the examples I gave in my post. 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. And when considering situations like that we've had with openSUSE Indonesia, and other regional openSUSE groups already, this is an area where any additional restrictions are likely to cause significant additional pain for the community. Such additional restrictions might be acceptable to the community as a whole as a cost of keeping the name, but it should be an informed decision, not fed by wishful thinking that are unlikely to be legally viable (even if emotionally I'm convinced we'd all like things to be as liberal as possible, SUSE and openSUSE). It's also worth considering that a huge amount of the Board's time is currently spend dealing with requests to use the openSUSE Trademarks, requiring what feels often like endless discussions and negotiations between interested parties and SUSE. We often can't share many of these details in our public minutes, but there have been times when the Board have had little time to deal with anything else, to the detriment of the Project as a whole. Having the Project operating under it's own mark would bring an additional benefit of significantly liberating the Board to take care of other matters with their limited voluntary time. [1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le 03/06/2019 à 11:45, Richard Brown a écrit :

If openSUSE keeps its current name, I would be absolutely shocked if we manage the form the Foundation under the name "openSUSE" without

may be it's possible to name the foundation as "chameleon foundation" (no SUSE in the name) or any similar trick and keep for the moment openSUSE as the distro name. or should we? Leap and Tumbleweed are now suse related for anybody jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Dne pondělí 3. června 2019 11:45:58 CEST, Richard Brown napsal(a):

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:34, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

...

SUSE owns the trademark and the names and as holder they can allow "us" the use of the name.

While this is true, as openSUSE transitions to having it's own legal entity, you should consider the possibility that such a grant of trademark use could have significantly limiting strings attached. Even without a legal entity, openSUSE already operates with significant constraints around the use of its name, which you can see in our Trademark Policy [1] and the examples I gave in my post. 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. And when considering situations like that we've had with openSUSE Indonesia, and other regional openSUSE groups already, this is an area where any additional restrictions are likely to cause significant additional pain for the community. Such additional restrictions might be acceptable to the community as a whole as a cost of keeping the name, but it should be an informed decision, not fed by wishful thinking that are unlikely to be legally viable (even if emotionally I'm convinced we'd all like things to be as liberal as possible, SUSE and openSUSE).

I don't do the adminstrative job, but IMHO this is acceptable price. If You have foundation, You also need to take care about the trademark and so on, don't You?

It's also worth considering that a huge amount of the Board's time is currently spend dealing with requests to use the openSUSE Trademarks, requiring what feels often like endless discussions and negotiations between interested parties and SUSE. We often can't share many of these details in our public minutes, but there have been times when the Board have had little time to deal with anything else, to the detriment of the Project as a whole. Having the Project operating under it's own mark would bring an additional benefit of significantly liberating the Board to take care of other matters with their limited voluntary time.

I'm not "insider" here, so I probably miss something, but I don't see this. The Board would also handle all the request. Or not?

[1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines -- Vojtěch Zeisek

Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/ https://trapa.cz/

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 11:33 AM, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello fellow Chameleons,

as understandable as the arguments are, I am against a rename. OpenSUSE is technologically tied to SUSE, so the name shows this quite well. I don't see a problem with brand name problems here. SUSE owns the trademark and the names and as holder they can allow "us" the use of the name.

It's **openSUSE** with a lowercase `o`, always ;) And I feel like I mentioned that in the first email... LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stasiek,

I know this rule, but I figured the rule that a starting sentence requires a capital letter, would overrule this ;-)

It's a brand name, it should always start with a lowercase, like in the trademark. I mean, we have been trying our best to explain this to everybody, but it's not feasible, which is why it's one of the reasons under the name change idea... LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 20:12, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Stasiek,

I know this rule, but I figured the rule that a starting sentence requires a capital letter, would overrule this ;-)

It's a brand name, it should always start with a lowercase, like in the trademark.

I mean, we have been trying our best to explain this to everybody, but it's not feasible, which is why it's one of the reasons under the name change idea...

But then we loose the fun of seeing how many different ways people get it wrong, and remember we should always have alot of fun :-) -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi Simon & LCP, To make it more fun, check https://www.suse.com/products/server and scroll down the page. ;-) Or just check the attached screenshot. On that note, I'm getting back to reading emails since June & compiling the arguments. Regards, Ish Sookun On 6/3/19 2:50 PM, Simon Lees wrote:

On 03/06/2019 20:12, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

...

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli <commel@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Stasiek,

I know this rule, but I figured the rule that a starting sentence requires a capital letter, would overrule this ;-)

It's a brand name, it should always start with a lowercase, like in the trademark.

I mean, we have been trying our best to explain this to everybody, but it's not feasible, which is why it's one of the reasons under the name change idea...

But then we loose the fun of seeing how many different ways people get it wrong, and remember we should always have alot of fun :-)

On Wed 2019-10-16, Ish Sookun wrote:

To make it more fun, check https://www.suse.com/products/server and scroll down the page. ;-)

Ouch. We'll get this fixed via SUSE marketing. (Thanks AJ for beating me to raising it.) On Wed 2019-10-16, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

I know it might be rare, but I really care about branding of openSUSE

Thanks for doing that! For the record, I also care. Maybe, maybe, maybe, tweaking the branding to avoid the lowercase O is something to consider? Is that thinkable? Not a proposal, merely a question. (Still not trivial, but a lot less effort and disruption than changing a name -- we have adjusted the SUSE logo some five years ago, for example, and that went relatively smoothly.) Gerald -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 2:40 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke <vinz@vinzv.de> wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 17. Oktober 2019, 11:47:10 CEST schrieb Gerald Pfeifer:

...

Maybe, maybe, maybe, tweaking the branding to avoid the lowercase O is something to consider? Is that thinkable? Not a proposal, merely a question. (Still not trivial, but a lot less effort and disruption than changing a name -- we have adjusted the SUSE logo some five years ago, for example, and that went relatively smoothly.)

What, giving up on the Sysiphus fight? ;-)

The wide masses did not care for the lowercase O for years now. And they won't care it's successor. Plus: changing the O still leaves us with "OpenSuSe", "OpenSuse" and "Open Suse" - or even "Open S.u.S.e".

So, it's just a small step and it won't have any measurable impact.

It would remove the openSUSE issue and keep the SUSE issue ;) I would be shocked if SUSE made that mistake in that case, but there is the whole internet out there. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Neal Gompa <ngompa13@gmail.com> hat am 17. Oktober 2019 um 15:03 geschrieben: At least it would fix dealing with word processors constantly "fixing" capitalization...

I never ran into this with Vi... *sneaks out* Regards, vinz. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

"Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> hat am 18. Oktober 2019 um 19:31 geschrieben:

...

At least it would fix dealing with word processors constantly "fixing" capitalization...

How about fixing the word processors? Surely we are not the only ones with this trouble. Add a trademark category that must be spelled exactly right.

Trademark guidelines are paper tigers as long as they are not either obvious or being enforced. I don't see where this would lead to any results besides that someone (presumeably the board) has more work to do. That aside tech press won't care for enforced notations. And even worse threatening them could lead to some unwanted backlash - with good reason. Regards, vinz. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 18/10/2019 21.38, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

Op vrijdag 18 oktober 2019 19:31:59 CEST schreef Carlos E. R.:

...

On 17/10/2019 15.03, Neal Gompa wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 9:01 AM Stasiek Michalski <> wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 2:40 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke <> wrote:

...

Am Donnerstag, 17. Oktober 2019, 11:47:10 CEST schrieb Gerald Pfeifer:

...

...

At least it would fix dealing with word processors constantly "fixing" capitalization...

How about fixing the word processors? Surely we are not the only ones with this trouble. Add a trademark category that must be spelled exactly right. No use. I investigated this some years ago, it would mean implementing local style rules from (unofficial) guidelines. In some countries one writes a brand name at the beginning of a sentence the exact way, in others one writes a capital no matter whether it's a brand name / trade mark or some other word.

So, when I published an article, there was no chance they would change the OpenSUSE spelling at the beginning of a sentence to openSUSE. This in NL. But, this is getting off topic

Offtopic or not, it is the first time in years I get an answer, so thank you both :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 19/10/2019 03.17, Basil Chupin wrote:

On 19/10/19 7:22 am, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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On 18/10/2019 21.38, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

Op vrijdag 18 oktober 2019 19:31:59 CEST schreef Carlos E. R.:

...

On 17/10/2019 15.03, Neal Gompa wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 9:01 AM Stasiek Michalski <> wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 2:40 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke <> wrote: > Am Donnerstag, 17. Oktober 2019, 11:47:10 CEST schrieb > Gerald Pfeifer:

...

...

...

At least it would fix dealing with word processors constantly "fixing" capitalization... How about fixing the word processors? Surely we are not the only ones with this trouble. Add a trademark category that must be spelled exactly right. No use. I investigated this some years ago, it would mean implementing local style rules from (unofficial) guidelines. In some countries one writes a brand name at the beginning of a sentence the exact way, in others one writes a capital no matter whether it's a brand name / trade mark or some other word.

So, when I published an article, there was no chance they would change the OpenSUSE spelling at the beginning of a sentence to openSUSE. This in NL. But, this is getting off topic Offtopic or not, it is the first time in years I get an answer, so thank you both :-)

Don't forget to print them out and frame them .

Oh, I have stored them in my important mail library, section LO and openSuSE ;-D - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iF0EARECAB0WIQQZEb51mJKK1KpcU/W1MxgcbY1H1QUCXbLxtQAKCRC1MxgcbY1H 1SVpAJ4zJfF2EIczxykkUoJoKe39d8KhVwCffOk/RIU/7c1YIAPuHoeUraDfots= =3pN1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/24/19 1:28 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

I don't want to blame or shame them anyhow. It just emphasizes the spelling problems "openSUSE" has and will have in the future without changing the name.

Or we just give a damn if people are screwed by their word processors. Greetings, Stephan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On Thu, 2019-10-24 at 13:59 +0200, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 24. Oktober 2019, 13:39:35 CEST schrieb Stephan Kulow:

...

...

I don't want to blame or shame them anyhow. It just emphasizes the spelling problems "openSUSE" has and will have in the future without changing the name. Or we just give a damn if people are screwed by their word processors.

Nah... what next? Red colored Geekos?

Well, it _is_ a chameleon. I've always found it ironic that the chameleon, Geeko, is consistently the same green. ;-) - - James -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEg/RjZ+RraZBnLRN4GzlRiGxEkCMFAl2xzeoACgkQGzlRiGxE kCOfywgAotXH4LpYMrFk/MRhXMd5hXsL/RpBHWqi1E9raC52rHGtpn/jVGJDAZ4J eDaVATTqWJ+rujRZtjXXdb6PQQXnuVcwWXjtKWLEnNfrpeUaToEde7X5yGvZKXEx 6x6ioY0I5LZLnvJHPC2WKPwYvxu1U5tlRYERGdh2h1pNhrIsPZ4qQ1CyoMpJam7i IQsYs0isTYKtPFdKGYPc8oQ+inyTyRhWZOgx5IlKm0JZnpTW0lFx6prSTIJloUNn moVLQpe88cwiVOaReJCaFQ2w+Lv3BOnXhE/3DR6/QLxudMtbxonVAXTY6Ltwu7Zf hNUXy4eSg3B0GTRwiPkPey1qjTwZ6g== =Kzz7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 10/25/19 7:41 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 24. Oktober 2019, 18:14:40 CEST schrieb James Mason:

...

Well, it _is_ a chameleon. I've always found it ironic that the chameleon, Geeko, is consistently the same green.

- James

If you do some web search and/or have a look a printed material you'll recognize that it hardly is always the *same* green. ;-)

According to our trademark policy, the full size logo should always be the same ugly shade of green (#73ba25), if its not especially in a web context which doen't have the slight variations you can get from printers it almost certainly means someone screwed up. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Artwork_brand#Logo -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On 10/26/19 1:29 AM, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

Am Freitag, 25. Oktober 2019, 14:06:28 CEST schrieb Simon Lees:

...

should

Subjunctive. There you go. ;)

Well in this case "should" really means "must" but its a "should" because It wouldn't supprise me if people screw it up (if we find cases we will ask them nicely to fix it or swap to using the head logo which allows more flexibility) -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 3:20 PM, Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 24.10.19 um 13:28 schrieb Vinzenz Vietzke:

...

Hi,

...

The wide masses did not care for the lowercase O for years now. And they won't care it's successor. Plus: changing the O still leaves us with "OpenSuSe", "OpenSuse" and "Open Suse" - or even "Open S.u.S.e".

Following that I want to give you a very recent example.

German "Linux Magazin" covered the name change voting today and mention the wrong spelling issues as well; => https://www.linux-magazin.de/news/opensuse-stellt-namenswechsel-zur-wahl/

(German: "Außerdem werde der Namen oft falsch geschrieben." = English: "In addition, the name is often misspelled.")

I talked to a well known heise news author about the issue and he told me:

"you know what? We just don't care anymore. We write OpenSUSE and be done. Who knows when they'll change the spelling again. It's not like our readers would not understand what we are writing about"

I can relate to this somehow.

This has been the only spelling since 2005. SUSE did change their spelling multiple times tho, I feel we got confused again ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 3:39 PM, Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 24.10.19 um 15:22 schrieb Stasiek Michalski:

...

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 3:20 PM, Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@googlemail.com> wrote:

...

Am 24.10.19 um 13:28 schrieb Vinzenz Vietzke:

...

Hi,

...

The wide masses did not care for the lowercase O for years now. And they won't care it's successor. Plus: changing the O still leaves us with "OpenSuSe", "OpenSuse" and "Open Suse" - or even "Open S.u.S.e".

Following that I want to give you a very recent example.

German "Linux Magazin" covered the name change voting today and mention the wrong spelling issues as well; => https://www.linux-magazin.de/news/opensuse-stellt-namenswechsel-zur-wahl/

(German: "Außerdem werde der Namen oft falsch geschrieben." = English: "In addition, the name is often misspelled.")

I talked to a well known heise news author about the issue and he told me:

"you know what? We just don't care anymore. We write OpenSUSE and be done. Who knows when they'll change the spelling again. It's not like our readers would not understand what we are writing about"

I can relate to this somehow.

This has been the only spelling since 2005. SUSE did change their spelling multiple times tho, I feel we got confused again ;)

S.u.S.E Linux SUSE Linux openSUSE Linux (?) openSUSE

openSUSE the name predates openSUSE the Linux distribution actually, openSUSE.org was a project for SUSE Linux 10 and 10.1, before openSUSE 10.2 was named after the website. Also keep in mind there was SuSE Linux between S.u.S.E. Linux and SUSE Linux, just if you weren't confused enough yet. That's also where names like YaST got their capitalization, to keep up with SuSE.

This guy I mentioned is around since S.u.S.E. times. For him the spelling changes all the time. He does no longer care. I can understand that.

Nobody should need to care, why we have a name that causes us this amount of branding trouble is a mystery to me though. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Donnerstag, 24. Oktober 2019, 16:43:04 CEST schrieb Gerald Pfeifer:

And that does not even take all the work that Henne pointed out into account, nor the boatloads of money required (which we do not have funding for from all I can tell).

Personally, I care a lot about branding (GCC vs gcc or SUSE vs SuSE or lately openSUSE vs OpenSuse being pet peeves of mine), but it's also a question of where to lean: pragma or dogma.

And on the other side it's a chance to get more distinct from SUSE. Not being thrown into the same pot is worth the work, as I pointed out earlier. But I guess we're running in circles here and most things have already been said. Regards, vinz.

On 24/10/2019 15:39, Stefan Seyfried wrote:

S.u.S.E Linux SUSE Linux openSUSE Linux (?) openSUSE

This guy I mentioned is around since S.u.S.E. times. For him the spelling changes all the time. He does no longer care. I can understand that.

Me too :) I'm using it since S.u.S.E Linux 4.3, so -- checking wikipedia for dates -- since 1996 :) And up until recently even SUSE tools had the mixed capitalization, like SuSEfirewall2 :) Bye, CzP -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2019-10-24T15:39:52, Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@googlemail.com> wrote:

This guy I mentioned is around since S.u.S.E. times. For him the spelling changes all the time. He does no longer care. I can understand that.

I'm pretty sure that's not an argument in favor of changing names once more. Also, someone who can't keep up with a change that was introduced 1,5 decades ago probably should seek to retire. -- SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) "Architects should open possibilities and not determine everything." (Ueli Zbinden) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am 24.10.19 um 15:52 schrieb Vinzenz Vietzke:

Am Donnerstag, 24. Oktober 2019, 15:20:03 CEST schrieb Stefan Seyfried:

...

...

I don't want to blame or shame them anyhow. It just emphasizes the spelling problems "openSUSE" has and will have in the future without changing the name. The problem is, we cannot change the name every time someone misspells it

I get that but have quite a different point of view on such details. If tech press does not care for correct name spelling - where else do the have loose standards for their writings?

Right. So the fix is: don't read Heise articles - but don't change the name to make the impression even correct. Greetings, Stephan -- Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things. Kenneth Branagh -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2019-10-24 at 15:52 +0200, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 24. Oktober 2019, 15:20:03 CEST schrieb Stefan Seyfried:

...

...

I don't want to blame or shame them anyhow. It just emphasizes the spelling problems "openSUSE" has and will have in the future without changing the name. The problem is, we cannot change the name every time someone misspells it

I get that but have quite a different point of view on such details. If tech press does not care for correct name spelling - where else do the have loose standards for their writings?

I'l take on that ;-) How can we blame them, if we are not able in the openSUSE distribution to ship spellers that corrects the wrong spelling to the correct one? Applies to any trademark spelling. Yes, I have been told that this is impossible to get. But still... - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHoEARECADoWIQQZEb51mJKK1KpcU/W1MxgcbY1H1QUCXbL3hhwccm9iaW4ubGlz dGFzQHRlbGVmb25pY2EubmV0AAoJELUzGBxtjUfV7dwAn01GhegQjLXnBR+DTu0y P+5YaU/SAJ4iJLJ8vdYumCRid5UICe/2dSqMEw== =t0jj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mon, 03 Jun 2019 11:25:42 +0200 schrieb Per Jessen <per@computer.org>:

I say no. As long as we remain tightly coupled to SUSE, there is nothing gained by changing. If anything, it would only add confusion.

In my experience with end users (read: customers) contact there already is confusion. There is talk about SUSE but openSUSE is meant, even more tech-savvy people tend to do that. And it's really hard to get this "out of the people". Regards, vinz. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mon, 3 Jun 2019 10:16:47 -0400 schrieb Patrick Shanahan <paka@opensuse.org>:

In my experience with end users (read: customers) contact there already

...

is confusion. There is talk about SUSE but openSUSE is meant, even more tech-savvy people tend to do that. And it's really hard to get this "out of the people".

yes, and as long as the users who began prior to openSUSE, that reference will continue. but it is a good reference.

Sure, nothing wrong with it - but it's inaccurate. So if we're complaining about OpenSuse, OpenSUSE, or any other form of writing we should complain about this referencing as well. Of course this all is nothing crucial and it's not the core reason to change the name. But it's papercuts that we could ge rid of. Regards, vinz. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mon, 3 Jun 2019 16:34:16 +0200 schrieb Stephan Kulow <coolo@suse.de>:

...

Of course this all is nothing crucial and it's not the core reason to change the name. But it's papercuts that we could ge rid of.

And you're seriously suggesting that people will be less confused if openSUSE changes its name? People who don't differ between an unpaid distribution and an enterprise distribution because there is an open before one of them?

Yes, seriously. People *are* aware of the differences between SUSE/openSUSE. They're just lazy and shorten it. Just like "Fedora Project" get's it's "project" lost. Regards, vinz. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Gesendet: Montag, 03. Juni 2019 um 11:59 Uhr Von: "Simon Lees" <sflees@suse.de> An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] Project name and logo discussion

On 03/06/2019 18:05, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, Stasiek Michalski <hellcp@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

Hi,

I am myself afraid of this email, because this is about the basis of the community, distributions, plans for foundation etc... Any change in regards to all things outlined here will be controversial and will have huge influence on the future of openSUSE as a whole. Take this very seriously, but also don't take it too seriously because it doesn't change the way community operates, but instead how it ends up being represented.

As mentioned in my talk week ago, I would like to change the openSUSE logo to break it off of SUSE branding, however as Richard rightfully pointed out, the suggestion should also mention changing the name of community and distributions, to remove the `SUSE` part of `openSUSE`, on top of a few other issues that are unrelated to foundation talks. [1,2]

We do need to tackle this now, considering we are going through vital parts of the talks of the Foundation, and both trademarks are planned to be transferred at some point, but it might be best to start off the foundation with the name and logo that isn't necessarily tied to SUSE brand for easier legal proceedings between SUSE and the project, depending on the community outlook on the ideas.

openSUSE logo issues: * older version of SUSE logo, which is similar enough to be confusing, also will require agreement between future openSUSE Foundation and SUSE to use the logo * colour is too bright and light to stand out well on light backgrounds [3] * button variant looks the same as SUSE logo buttons, with the only exception being colour (and SUSE tends to use similar green for buttons they haven't updated in a long time)

For current proposals, and to propose more visit: https://github.com/openSUSE/branding/issues/93

openSUSE name issues: * contains `SUSE`, which will require agreement between future openSUSE Foundation and SUSE to use the name (we will need this anyway, because we will support older releases, but at least there would be some exit strategy when everything goes south built into the name of the foundation) * we are endlessly complaining about wrong capitalization (and will for the rest of time), even SUSE has it easier with "only" SuSE, SuSe and Suse [4] * FSF complains about `open`, although that works with openness of the collaboration, more than `free` or `libre` would (not to mention that we do have non-free repos) [5]

There has obviously been a lot of suggestions here, from various contributors, stuff like `Viridian Foundation` works quite well for the purposes of the naming, because it references SUSE, while not being directly tied to SUSE name (although it might be too generic and hard to type).

More important than the name itself however is to decide if we want to change the logo and/or the name at all, or we want to leave everything as is. If we do decide for a change there we will be able to choose the name and the logo through a vote, I or some other designer will just have to design and fix up logos proposed by the community for the vote (like it was previously done with the YaST mascot/logo, which looked crude before the redesign, but was a great community idea). [6]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAgkMlCZiP4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUZmc4CXzFQ [3] https://contrast-ratio.com/#%2373ba25-on-white [4] https://i.imgur.com/ySr4JAA.png [5] https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#openSUSE [6] https://github.com/yast/yast-theme/commit/1cdb9e9c2545ba1604f8bdf88864e9ae9b...

From my point of view, there a number of benefits of renaming the openSUSE Project, especially when considering the announced-at-oSC intention to form an "openSUSE Foundation" to be a standalone legal entity representing the project.

For any such entity to be fully autonomously functional, it will need to have at least some control/ownership/rights to it's own name & trademark.

openSUSE's current name makes such things rather complicated. Trademarks are only enforceable if they're considered unique.

Right now, we operate under a situation where both SUSE and openSUSE are owned by SUSE, therefore are considered 'unique'.

This has some practical side effects - for example, with domain names. SUSE can't allow broad reuse of their mark without risking the enforceability of their primary SUSE trademark, therefore SUSE effectively have to register and own every possible *opensuse*.* domain that the Project or any of our ancillary communities use, in order to protect their overarching SUSE Trademark.

SUSE does a great job of making such domains available for openSUSE's use under the current circumstances, but this occasionally leads to situations that are awkward and uncomfortable for all involved. For example, the openSUSE Indonesia community had to transfer the domain they registered to run their local community sites/mirrors to the control of SUSE, which no one really wanted to do and was logistically problematic given the details of how Indonesia's domain registry works.

Figuring out how/whether the future Foundation could own/control any openSUSE domains is an open topic.

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.

Renaming the Project on the other hand would allow openSUSE to form it's foundation under that new name. Given the amicable and cooperative nature of our transition towards this 'less dependant' governance model, I can foresee a situation where, if the Project decides to rename, we operate under both the new and the old name for a period to avoid a too disruptive switch over from "openSUSE" to "whatever" - this worked pretty smoothly back in the days of SUSE Linux 10.0/10.1 which were produced "by openSUSE" for example.

So despite the challenges and disruption that any rename could cause, I do see the benefits, especially around the trickier parts of the upcoming Foundation negotiations.

That said, my view is only one. if the community is abhorrently against the idea of renaming, that's good to know, and the Board will factor in the feedback into our negotiations with SUSE as we work towards forming the Foundation.

Either way, we really need to have a good understanding of what the community at large feel on this topic. If we don't have the discussion now, it will likely be too late once legal entities and agreements between SUSE & openSUSE are formalised.

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

Again keeping it short, No, the board has been given quite some guarantee we will be able to continue to use openSUSE as long as we need / want. If that was to ever change and we no longer could i'd be all for creating a "fork" to a new name based off, "openSUSE is changing its name because it's working relationship with SUSE has come to the point were we feel we can no longer share the same name". This would generate more then enough press that whatever we change to will become instantly recognised, it would equally create enough bad press for SUSE that they would consider whether the choice is wise. But until that point comes hopefully it never does i'm all for keeping the existing name it is known and represents everything the project is so well

I want to agree with Simon's reasons to keep the openSUSE name. I want to add that we are one of most well known Linux / open source projects. Everybody identifies us with this name and the chameleon. We can modernize our logo. But it should have a green, because most people are giving us the name of a green community. Founding a foundation is a bad reason to change the name. There are other open source projects with a foundation (ownCloud as an example) who are sharing their name with a company. Why should we do that then? That would damage our image and that of SUSE, too. Best regards, Sarah -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Montag, 3. Juni 2019, 13:20:44 CEST schrieb Ancor Gonzalez Sosa:

On 6/3/19 11:59 AM, Simon Lees wrote:

...

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

Again keeping it short, No, the board has been given quite some guarantee we will be able to continue to use openSUSE as long as we need / want. If that was to ever change and we no longer could i'd be all for creating a "fork" to a new name based off, "openSUSE is changing its name because it's working relationship with SUSE has come to the point were we feel we can no longer share the same name". This would generate more then enough press that whatever we change to will become instantly recognised, it would equally create enough bad press for SUSE that they would consider whether the choice is wise. But until that point comes hopefully it never does i'm all for keeping the existing name it is known and represents everything the project is so well

I agree. Despite the practical reasons given by Richard, I feel changing the name is fixing something that is not broken.

+1

It's a disruptive change that could send a message of bad relationship or a loss of trust between SUSE and openSUSE. No matter how you word the public announcement, most people will get it as a breakup.

The potential of hurting the public image of SUSE and openSUSE overweights the practical reasons by far, in my opinion.

Changing the brand (not only the name) is a process that requires a massive and well conducted communication plan. Companies spend millions in this - I would rather see this money spend on development (assuming we have it, which I know is not the case) - the perception of the new brand in the market is not guaranteed.

I have seen many open source projects changing their names over the years, and I don't think any of those name changes have boosted or improved the corresponding project in any significant way.

As others have pointed out, SUSE is the oldest distro in the market, so the brand is well known. That has always a negative side ('some 15 years ago I had a graphic card that was not working with SUSE' and other gossip) as people have a certain image in mind. We as a community feel very different about that - good relationships and fun on what we do, using the best toolchain in the market. The question 'What does openSUSE stands for' has to be defined first (board started the discussion already internally). I see the legal implications Richard pointed out, I see as well that some major computer mags in Germany are constantly ignoring openSUSE (instead enthusiastically reporting about 'fresh new distros' every couple of weeks, just to notice that development has stopped some more month later...), but I still feel the brand perception of openSUSE in general is positive and reliable. So..redesign yes, rebranding no My 2c Axel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 1:59 PM, Knurpht-openSUSE <knurpht@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

...

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

Again keeping it short, No, the board has been given quite some guarantee we will be able to continue to use openSUSE as long as we need / want. If that was to ever change and we no longer could i'd be all for creating a "fork" to a new name based off, "openSUSE is changing its name because it's working relationship with SUSE has come to the

...

were we feel we can no longer share the same name". This would generate more then enough press that whatever we change to will become instantly recognised, it would equally create enough bad press for SUSE

On 6/3/19 11:59 AM, Simon Lees wrote: point that they

...

would consider whether the choice is wise. But until that point comes hopefully it never does i'm all for keeping the existing name it is known and represents everything the project is so well

I agree. Despite the practical reasons given by Richard, I feel changing the name is fixing something that is not broken.

It's a disruptive change that could send a message of bad relationship or a loss of trust between SUSE and openSUSE. No matter how you word the public announcement, most people will get it as a breakup.

The potential of hurting the public image of SUSE and openSUSE overweights the practical reasons by far, in my opinion.

I have seen many open source projects changing their names over the years, and I don't think any of those name changes have boosted or improved the corresponding project in any significant way.

Cheers. Yep. I'd even go a step further: I'd like to somehow see the relationship with SUSE, that we all at oSC19 seem to agree upon should continue, represented in

Op maandag 3 juni 2019 13:20:44 CEST schreef Ancor Gonzalez Sosa: the name of the foundation / project. This relationship is also part of our marketing strategy, i.e. Leap / SLE's shared code base a.o.t.

Then I don't really see how Tumbleweed fits into that strategy, it's an upstream, sure, but if the plan is to disassociate Leap and Tumbleweed from openSUSE, then what does openSUSE have to do with SLE or SUSE? If we are going to do our best to disassociate the brands, I don't see why not go all the way and keep the most important parts similar enough to not be mistaken for another thing :D Green and chameleon, green and chameleon, green and chameleon... that's geeko That's more than RH and Fedora which are associated only in the type of hat ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 23:28, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

Hi,

given the thread already got quite long and many points are explained already I'd like to pick this one out representing it's occurrences in other peoples mails:

...

I'd like to somehow see the relationship with SUSE, that we all at oSC19 seem to agree upon should continue, represented in the name of the foundation / project.

Though I second the desire to express the relationship somehow I don't see the need to keep "SUSE" in the name to show these affiliation. See Fedora vs. Red Hat where this is and never was an issue. In the end it's a matter of clear and to the point communication. Fedora is commonly referred as "the community project" of Red Hat, even after 15 years being around.

If we were starting the project from scratch I think this argument would have more merit, but just as fedora / Redhat has spent many years getting there message out we have spent many years getting the message out about the relationship between openSUSE and SUSE. I don't think now is a good time to change that message and need to spend the next 10 years selling the fact that "Project X" is now SUSE's openSUSE counterpart so sure while SUSE doesn't need to be in the name changing that now is undoing years of hard work. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Dne pondělí 3. června 2019 11:59:45 CEST, Simon Lees napsal(a):

On 03/06/2019 18:05, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, Stasiek Michalski <hellcp@opensuse.org> wrote: From my point of view, there a number of benefits of renaming the openSUSE Project, especially when considering the announced-at-oSC intention to form an "openSUSE Foundation" to be a standalone legal entity representing the project. For any such entity to be fully autonomously functional, it will need to have at least some control/ownership/rights to it's own name & trademark. openSUSE's current name makes such things rather complicated. Trademarks are only enforceable if they're considered unique. Right now, we operate under a situation where both SUSE and openSUSE are owned by SUSE, therefore are considered 'unique'. This has some practical side effects - for example, with domain names. SUSE can't allow broad reuse of their mark without risking the enforceability of their primary SUSE trademark, therefore SUSE effectively have to register and own every possible *opensuse*.* domain that the Project or any of our ancillary communities use, in order to protect their overarching SUSE Trademark. SUSE does a great job of making such domains available for openSUSE's use under the current circumstances, but this occasionally leads to situations that are awkward and uncomfortable for all involved. For example, the openSUSE Indonesia community had to transfer the domain they registered to run their local community sites/mirrors to the control of SUSE, which no one really wanted to do and was logistically problematic given the details of how Indonesia's domain registry works. Figuring out how/whether the future Foundation could own/control any openSUSE domains is an open topic. 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. Renaming the Project on the other hand would allow openSUSE to form it's foundation under that new name. Given the amicable and cooperative nature of our transition towards this 'less dependant' governance model, I can foresee a situation where, if the Project decides to rename, we operate under both the new and the old name for a period to avoid a too disruptive switch over from "openSUSE" to "whatever" - this worked pretty smoothly back in the days of SUSE Linux 10.0/10.1 which were produced "by openSUSE" for example. So despite the challenges and disruption that any rename could cause, I do see the benefits, especially around the trickier parts of the upcoming Foundation negotiations. That said, my view is only one. if the community is abhorrently against the idea of renaming, that's good to know, and the Board will factor in the feedback into our negotiations with SUSE as we work towards forming the Foundation. Either way, we really need to have a good understanding of what the community at large feel on this topic. If we don't have the discussion now, it will likely be too late once legal entities and agreements between SUSE & openSUSE are formalised. So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others. Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

Shortly, no, despite all Richard's good arguments, no, I don't see it beneficial.

Again keeping it short, No, the board has been given quite some guarantee we will be able to continue to use openSUSE as long as we need / want. If that was to ever change and we no longer could i'd be all for creating a "fork" to a new name based off, "openSUSE is changing its name because it's working relationship with SUSE has come to the point were we feel we can no longer share the same name". This would generate more then enough press that whatever we change to will become instantly recognised, it would equally create enough bad press for SUSE that they would consider whether the choice is wise. But until that point comes hopefully it never does i'm all for keeping the existing name it is known and represents everything the project is so well

I fully agree here. I see the tight bound between openSUSE and SUSE as very beneficial. As explained elsewhere, the change would require huge amount of work and IMHO we already do have a lot of work to do, so I don't think the change is worth of the work needed. -- Vojtěch Zeisek Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/ https://trapa.cz/

Gesendet: Dienstag, 04. Juni 2019 um 11:28 Uhr Von: "Richard Brown" <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> An: "Vojtěch Zeisek" <vojtech.zeisek@opensuse.org>, opensuse-project <opensuse-project@opensuse.org> Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] Project name and logo discussion

On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 11:05, Vojtěch Zeisek <vojtech.zeisek@opensuse.org> wrote:

So, everyone please, don't fool yourselves into thinking there is one 'easier' option out of the two presented here.

In the best case, we are allowed to keep our name and SUSE wants to continue the cooperation with all the benefits. The Board is allowed to make all important decisions then. ownCloud has used the openSUSE project as a role model with the openSUSE Board and the community. The only difference should be, that partners can buy one position in the ownCloud Board. Their problem is, that most Contributors are ownCloud employees. They want to improve their rules for the community.

As a Project we've got a lot of work to do either way. Which is why this debate is so healthy and productive to have - as a community we've got to pick the poison we're happiest to drink ;) -- That's true. It would be interesting to hear/ see the opinion from SUSE side. In addition, openSUSE has been founded by Community Members (some of them exist now). It would be interesting to know their feedback about such ideas (and by others who contributed during this time).

Best regards, Sarah -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi all, Am 04.06.19 um 18:38 schrieb Klaas Freitag:

Am 04.06.19 um 14:06 schrieb Sarah Julia Kriesch:

...

Hi,

...

...

In the best case, we are allowed to keep our name and SUSE wants to continue the cooperation with all the benefits. The Board is allowed to make all important decisions then.

ownCloud has used the openSUSE project as a role model with the openSUSE Board and the community. The only difference should be, that partners can buy one position in the ownCloud Board. Their problem is, that most Contributors are ownCloud employees.

I am not sure these statements are true. And also I would not call the ownCloud Foundation a great success so far. Unfortunately. from what I see so far, the role-model did not work out best for ownCloud maybe. But I guess to trust Klaas here is not the worst idea.

But for the other fact Sarah stated out - that we are a world-famous and best-known Linux distribution - I would like you to consider the facts on this and really ask - is the openSUSE brand a well-known, worldwide brand? Or is it just SUSE and we are the copycat/free rider along their fame and marketing department? [1] Yes, the brand openSUSE is well-known in the openSUSE community. But changing a name should be quite fast known by everybody in the community. In the outside-world - the brand openSUSE is barely visible - from what you can see from the posted statistics. Compared to our "brand-competitors" if you would like to call them so - like Ubuntu (market leader) Debian (stable second) and Fedora (even better than us). Only speaking about, visibility and market-share (which you can measure from Google Trends) not talking about code quality or technical details. So if you think of changing a name, make it a BIG press release - and maybe this will start people looking into openSUSE and actually move the community forward by adding new people and even more visibility ;). See it as a chance, not as a burden. If we find a cool and catchy name for this project, I would vote for taking this opportunity to solve all those legal issues and use the drives which comes from this media coverage ;). [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?hl=de&tz=-120&date=today+12-m,today+12-m,today+12-m,today+12-m&geo=,,,&q=%2Fm%2F02pxwz1,%2Fm%2F02996,Ubuntu,%2Fm%2F079d8p&sni=3 Cheers, -- Thorsten Bro <tbro@opensuse.org> - Member of openSUSE Heroes - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes - Member of openSUSE VideoTeam - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Video -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Pierre Böckmann composed on 2019-06-05 10:23 (UTC+0200):

...in the end it's just a name and I always thought that other distributions have names that sound better and look better and have more beautiful logos, too. I am using openSUSE not because of it's name or logo or brand...

My sentiments too, though I'm barely off the fence on the subject of naming. I don't like name changes at all, but neither do I like polysyllabic names. Sometimes a name change is warranted. The Goldstar brand's reputation for ugly, cheap, and early failure come to mind, ending up as today's LG brand. I agree foundation creation is an opportune time to break free of legal strings and newcomer confusion. There seem to remain people who avoid openSUSE because of the ancient Novell/Microsoft connection. The SuSE, SUSE, openSUSE OpenSuSE, S.U.S.E., opensuse, Opensuse muck is not "a" name to be proud of, nor are shades of green that belong to nutrient starved vegetation, blood-starved dying body parts, or (unenlightened) darkness. I suggest the colors of royalty, and a name suggesting power, one that suggests its well over two decades heritage is rich. A cutesy little Gecko doesn't suggest power or competence to me, and probably same for the skilled distro hunters we'd like to welcome to our ranks. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> [06-03-19 04:38]: [...]

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

I do not. I really was upset when it was changed from SuSE and again SUSE, but understand the need to move to openSUSE. I believe the effort needed to resolve all the necessary issues is much better expended on further development of our distribution. and Leap and Tumbleweed should remain distinctive sub "brand" names for openSUSE. and for writing, one should never change a proper name, it is "openSUSE", whether at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence or standing alone. and that should stand for *any* language or alphabet. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le 03/06/2019 à 13:53, Patrick Shanahan a écrit :

and for writing, one should never change a proper name, it is "openSUSE", whether at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence or standing alone. and that should stand for *any* language or alphabet.

but many software do automatic capitalization :-( jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 19.38, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* jdd@dodin.org <jdd@dodin.org> [06-03-19 12:55]:

...

Le 03/06/2019 à 13:53, Patrick Shanahan a écrit :

...

and for writing, one should never change a proper name, it is "openSUSE", whether at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence or standing alone. and that should stand for *any* language or alphabet.

but many software do automatic capitalization :-(

so you may not be able to rely on automagick, but must make your own corrections. you are able, this *is* linux.

Nope. Some software correct it back.

or just continue to use faulty software and be wrong.

Like libreoffice calc? -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.0 x86_64 at Telcontar)

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Wednesday, June 5, 2019 5:31 PM, Ish Sookun <ish.sookun@lasentinelle.mu> wrote:

On 6/3/19 3:53 PM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

I really was upset when it was changed from SuSE and again SUSE, but understand the need to move to openSUSE. I believe the effort needed to resolve all the necessary issues is much better expended on further development of our distribution. and Leap and Tumbleweed should remain distinctive sub "brand" names for openSUSE.

How about having a foundation name different as the distro name and we get to keep openSUSE? Something like:

        +--------------------+         | Example Foundation |         +---------+----------+                   |                   |                   v             +-----+----+             | openSUSE |             +----+-----+                  |         v--------+----------v        +------+      +------------+        | Leap |      | Tumbleweed |        +------+      +------+-----+                             |                             |                      v------+-----v                  +-------+    +---------+                  | Kubic |    | MicroOS |                  +-------+    +---------+

How about just giving a new name to the foundation loosely tied to the existing brand (e.g. Squamata Foundation) and just dropping the "openSUSE" without replacement. The distributions do have names already. So basically "openSUSE Tumbleweed" becomes "Tumbleweed" and "openSUSE Leap" becomes "Leap" with highly visible release names (maybe different lizards) like Debian's and Ubuntu's releases. In my opinion this would be beneficial to marketing. Everybody cares about "Disco Dingo", but "15.2" sounds quite boring. Dropping the "openSUSE" has the following benefits: * Seemingly cutting ties to a Novell/Microsoft Deal/"Corporate Overlord" past without creating "SUSE is abandonning openSUSE" FUD. * Tumbleweed and Leap are recognizable brands with very different audiences, they don't need an umbrella name (like Fedora and CentOS don't have one either). * Not being called anything *SUSE* might help making Packman (or at least some of the packman packages) more official, which would help making it more easy to install them (Ubuntu-easy, not the existing "easier than before, but still not really noob-friendly). Mageia for example got rid of the PLF repo, when they were no longer Mandrake/Mandriva branded. +---------------------+ | Squamata Foundation | +---------+-----------+ | | v | v--------+----------v +------+ +------------+ | Leap | | Tumbleweed | +------+ +------+-----+ | | v------+-----v +-------+ +---------+ | Kubic | | MicroOS | +-------+ +---------+

We might not address the limitations expressed in previous emails regarding usage of the SUSE wording, but we could have user groups, local associations, domain names registered under "Example Foundation" without requiring SUSE permission. It would solve the inconvenience of getting sponsorship & funding which currently has to go through SUSE.

Local user groups & associations would perhaps still be required to agree to a terms of use for the "openSUSE" wording.

Regards,

Ish Sookun Nry隊Z)z{.k7맲rz^ˬzN(֜^ ޭ隊Z)z{.k70Ǩ

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On 6/3/19 4:35 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, Stasiek Michalski <hellcp@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

<snip> So despite the challenges and disruption that any rename could cause, I do see the benefits, especially around the trickier parts of the upcoming Foundation negotiations.

That said, my view is only one. if the community is abhorrently against the idea of renaming, that's good to know, and the Board will factor in the feedback into our negotiations with SUSE as we work towards forming the Foundation.

Either way, we really need to have a good understanding of what the community at large feel on this topic. If we don't have the discussion now, it will likely be too late once legal entities and agreements between SUSE & openSUSE are formalised.

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

I think the answer, as with everything, is it depends ;) If the questions I am about to ask have already been answered then please forgive my ignorance and point me in the right direction. I believe the decision of the name change is logically closely coupled to the reason the Foundation idea is being pursued again. Way back when the idea of a foundation was first pursuit it was primarily driven by the idea that the project should be as independent as possible from the primary corporate sponsor to achieve isolation from whatever happens in the corporate world. Since that time SUSE has gone through a number of corporate transitions and as a community I'd say we haven't really been negatively effected, from my point of view. But if the goal of the foundation is to "be independent" then that would suggest a name/branding/logo i.e. pretty much everything change. Personally I am not a big fan but if the foundation's goal is to create independence from SUSE, then IMHO that's the way it has to be. If, on the other hand, the goal of forming a foundation is primarily to establish a legal entity such that other sponsors have a place to send money without writing a check to SUSE and thus getting the impression that they bolster SUSE's bottom line. Then a name change is not going to be beneficial, IMHO. So the underlying question, and with that back to my intro. Is there a statement by the board or others as to the underlying reasons why a foundation is being pursuit (again)? And why now? Thanks, 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

Op maandag 3 juni 2019 16:17:46 CEST schreef Richard Brown:

And despite my personal preferences, I will gladly embrace whatever the community decides. Either way it will help shape the structure of the Foundation as it comes together. That's a good summary of my feelings / thoughts in the discussion. Furhermore me too still is contemplating all of the F2F Board meeting and the talks I had on oSC19.

-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

W dniu 03.06.2019 o 18:39, Robert Schweikert pisze:

On 6/3/19 10:17 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 15:55, Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@suse.com> wrote:

...

So the underlying question, and with that back to my intro. Is there a statement by the board or others as to the underlying reasons why a foundation is being pursuit (again)?  And why now?

In a few short bulletpoints for those who cant be bothered to watch the video.

- The Primary motivation is to enable the openSUSE Project to be able to receive, spend, and sign it's own contracts/sponsorships/money - This should be _in addition to_, not _in replacement of_ the exceptionally positive and good working relationship openSUSE has with SUSE -  Both the Board and SUSE are keen on using this opportunity to codify the nature of that close working relationship into the by-laws/charter of the Foundation (likely to be a German Stiftung) - I personally refer to this effort and openSUSE seeking "less dependence" on SUSE, not "independence"

Hopefully you can see how the above tenants have learned the lessons of previous efforts and I would describe this current effort as the most amicable, mutually respectful, and uniquely "openSUSE/SUSEian", with the vast majority so far seeming to agree with the broad strokes of the topic.

With this as goals I think sticking with the existing name and branding would properly continue to express the relationship and the trademark issues should be able to be overcome in a way that reaches a workable level without being a burden on everyone.

Later, Robert

Thank you for your spot-on question. So far in this whole discussion, I find this argument most convincing.

Gesendet: Dienstag, 04. Juni 2019 um 00:38 Uhr Von: "Simon Lees" <sflees@suse.de> An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] Project name and logo discussion

On 04/06/2019 02:09, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

Hi,

On 6/3/19 10:17 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 15:55, Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@suse.com> wrote:

...

So the underlying question, and with that back to my intro. Is there a statement by the board or others as to the underlying reasons why a foundation is being pursuit (again)?  And why now?

The Board is working on a briefing document to explain such things, but the need for us all to rest a bit after the exhausting Board Meeting/oSC combination has meant that this discussion has leapt onto these lists before that document has been finalised.

The Board will produce this document as soon as it can; in my case, I do need to spend a few work days on my regular work, so I cant promise exactly when I'll be able to contribute much to that drafting effort.

Meanwhile though, thanks to the amazing work of the Video team, there is a solid recording of the discussion the Board started on this topic at oSC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUZmc4CXzFQ&t=1s

It does a good job of explaining why a Foundation is being pursued and in what form.

Thanks for the link.

...

In a few short bulletpoints for those who cant be bothered to watch the video.

- The Primary motivation is to enable the openSUSE Project to be able to receive, spend, and sign it's own contracts/sponsorships/money - This should be _in addition to_, not _in replacement of_ the exceptionally positive and good working relationship openSUSE has with SUSE -  Both the Board and SUSE are keen on using this opportunity to codify the nature of that close working relationship into the by-laws/charter of the Foundation (likely to be a German Stiftung) - I personally refer to this effort and openSUSE seeking "less dependence" on SUSE, not "independence"

Hopefully you can see how the above tenants have learned the lessons of previous efforts and I would describe this current effort as the most amicable, mutually respectful, and uniquely "openSUSE/SUSEian", with the vast majority so far seeming to agree with the broad strokes of the topic.

With this as goals I think sticking with the existing name and branding would properly continue to express the relationship and the trademark issues should be able to be overcome in a way that reaches a workable level without being a burden on everyone.

Yes I think this is the important point, if there is widespread support for a change of name now is the right time to have that discussion but at the same time no one is saying that we need to or really should change the name in order to make the foundation proposal work.

We should think about what would happen, if we were change the community name and what exists. If we change to the suggested chameleon foundation, we can mixed up with the Gecko Linux (which is based on us). We should watch all these risks and what can happen with such a change. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 6/3/19 2:35 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

I feel there is a LOT of brand equity in openSUSE. Changing the name will require a LONG time to rebuild that equity. And the field of Linux distros/projects is already very cluttered with unrecognizable names, some misleading names, that come and go. The rapid coming-and-going names cause mistrust and disinterest. I think we should keep the openSUSE name: for stability, for long-term recognition of what we stand for, and for continued capitalization on what is known and trusted. I recognize the potential of the opportunity here. This is a time that might not come again in quite so favorable circumstances, to launch a new brand and to stand unique. But I personally don't see the potential benefit(s) outperforming the strengths and permanence of remaining openSUSE. That's my contribution to the discussion, for whatever it's worth.

On 3/6/19 6:35 pm, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, Stasiek Michalski <hellcp@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

Hi,

I am myself afraid of this email, because this is about the basis of the community, distributions, plans for foundation etc... Any change in regards to all things outlined here will be controversial and will have huge influence on the future of openSUSE as a whole. Take this very seriously, but also don't take it too seriously because it doesn't change the way community operates, but instead how it ends up being represented.

As mentioned in my talk week ago, I would like to change the openSUSE logo to break it off of SUSE branding, however as Richard rightfully pointed out, the suggestion should also mention changing the name of community and distributions, to remove the `SUSE` part of `openSUSE`, on top of a few other issues that are unrelated to foundation talks. [1,2]

We do need to tackle this now, considering we are going through vital parts of the talks of the Foundation, and both trademarks are planned to be transferred at some point, but it might be best to start off the foundation with the name and logo that isn't necessarily tied to SUSE brand for easier legal proceedings between SUSE and the project, depending on the community outlook on the ideas.

openSUSE logo issues: * older version of SUSE logo, which is similar enough to be confusing, also will require agreement between future openSUSE Foundation and SUSE to use the logo * colour is too bright and light to stand out well on light backgrounds [3] * button variant looks the same as SUSE logo buttons, with the only exception being colour (and SUSE tends to use similar green for buttons they haven't updated in a long time)

For current proposals, and to propose more visit: https://github.com/openSUSE/branding/issues/93

openSUSE name issues: * contains `SUSE`, which will require agreement between future openSUSE Foundation and SUSE to use the name (we will need this anyway, because we will support older releases, but at least there would be some exit strategy when everything goes south built into the name of the foundation) * we are endlessly complaining about wrong capitalization (and will for the rest of time), even SUSE has it easier with "only" SuSE, SuSe and Suse [4] * FSF complains about `open`, although that works with openness of the collaboration, more than `free` or `libre` would (not to mention that we do have non-free repos) [5]

There has obviously been a lot of suggestions here, from various contributors, stuff like `Viridian Foundation` works quite well for the purposes of the naming, because it references SUSE, while not being directly tied to SUSE name (although it might be too generic and hard to type).

More important than the name itself however is to decide if we want to change the logo and/or the name at all, or we want to leave everything as is. If we do decide for a change there we will be able to choose the name and the logo through a vote, I or some other designer will just have to design and fix up logos proposed by the community for the vote (like it was previously done with the YaST mascot/logo, which looked crude before the redesign, but was a great community idea). [6]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAgkMlCZiP4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUZmc4CXzFQ [3] https://contrast-ratio.com/#%2373ba25-on-white [4] https://i.imgur.com/ySr4JAA.png [5] https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#openSUSE [6] https://github.com/yast/yast-theme/commit/1cdb9e9c2545ba1604f8bdf88864e9ae9b... From my point of view, there a number of benefits of renaming the openSUSE Project, especially when considering the announced-at-oSC intention to form an "openSUSE Foundation" to be a standalone legal entity representing the project.

For any such entity to be fully autonomously functional, it will need to have at least some control/ownership/rights to it's own name & trademark.

openSUSE's current name makes such things rather complicated. Trademarks are only enforceable if they're considered unique.

Right now, we operate under a situation where both SUSE and openSUSE are owned by SUSE, therefore are considered 'unique'.

This has some practical side effects - for example, with domain names. SUSE can't allow broad reuse of their mark without risking the enforceability of their primary SUSE trademark, therefore SUSE effectively have to register and own every possible *opensuse*.* domain that the Project or any of our ancillary communities use, in order to protect their overarching SUSE Trademark.

SUSE does a great job of making such domains available for openSUSE's use under the current circumstances, but this occasionally leads to situations that are awkward and uncomfortable for all involved. For example, the openSUSE Indonesia community had to transfer the domain they registered to run their local community sites/mirrors to the control of SUSE, which no one really wanted to do and was logistically problematic given the details of how Indonesia's domain registry works.

Figuring out how/whether the future Foundation could own/control any openSUSE domains is an open topic.

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.

Renaming the Project on the other hand would allow openSUSE to form it's foundation under that new name. Given the amicable and cooperative nature of our transition towards this 'less dependant' governance model, I can foresee a situation where, if the Project decides to rename, we operate under both the new and the old name for a period to avoid a too disruptive switch over from "openSUSE" to "whatever" - this worked pretty smoothly back in the days of SUSE Linux 10.0/10.1 which were produced "by openSUSE" for example.

So despite the challenges and disruption that any rename could cause, I do see the benefits, especially around the trickier parts of the upcoming Foundation negotiations.

That said, my view is only one. if the community is abhorrently against the idea of renaming, that's good to know, and the Board will factor in the feedback into our negotiations with SUSE as we work towards forming the Foundation.

Either way, we really need to have a good understanding of what the community at large feel on this topic. If we don't have the discussion now, it will likely be too late once legal entities and agreements between SUSE & openSUSE are formalised.

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

NO, absolutely NO. BC -- "If it weren't for electricity we'd be all watching television by candlelight." George Gobel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am 03.06.19 um 10:35 schrieb Richard Brown:

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

No. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi, Am 05.06.19 um 14:32 schrieb Michal Kubecek:

On Monday, 3 June 2019 10:35 Richard Brown wrote:

...

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

My view is: no in general, strong no to any change dropping "SUSE" from the name. Come on, we already ditched "Linux", if we ditch "SUSE" too, what will be left? :-)

OK, seriously now. While I do understand that renaming openSUSE to something not containing "SUSE" would make certain administrative tasks easier, I don't think it would be worth the harm it would do on general perception of the distribution.

In my eyes, the connection to SUSE was always something that made the distribution interesting, what made it stand out in the ever growing list of nameless "Yet Another Linux Distribution"'s (and that was long before I joined SUSE). Recently we made that connection even stronger with Leap but dropping "SUSE" from the name would inevitably be seen as a step in the opposite direction. The fact that actual technical disconnection of openSUSE from SUSE would be unfeasible for years (if ever) doesn't change anything. The perception and irrational factors are way more important than we would like.

You may use Fedora as an example of successful rename but I believe the position of Fedora is much weaker than the position of old RHL used to be. I don't claim it's only because of the rename (the raise of Ubuntu is surely to blame) but I believe the name is part of the problem and I believe it did harm its position. And one more thing to consider: IIRC the impuls for renaming came from Red Hat which makes the situation completely different from ours.

As for logo change, I don't think it's needed either but I don't really mind. I would certainly appreciate a decent shade of green (i.e. exact opposite of recent SUSE branding changes).

usually I stay pretty silent about those kind of discussions especially typical "metoo" posts but in this very case I want to raise my opinion and have to say that I agree 100% with what Michal mentioned before with the addition that I also would discard any ideas of significant logo change. So at least one cannot say later that people didn't give their feedback. That being said I'm currently not affected by any formal issues the current setup creates for certain groups. So if it's absolutely unreasonable to keep the actual setup then this opinion probably does not matter. Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op woensdag 5 juni 2019 15:46:18 CEST schreef Ish Sookun:

On 6/3/19 12:35 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

No matter how much I'd like openSUSE to stay close to its roots by keeping the SUSE part, I feel that the arguments to be less dependent on SUSE and gain more infrastructure control weigh more. I am in favor of both the logo & project name change.

Regards,

Ish Sookun Here's where I am too. One of the things I love about these community discussions is that reading other people's input sometimes makes me change my mind, makes me aware of the emotional part in my reasoning. "openSUSE is my home" f.e. But it's not the name, it's the community, the project which are in my heart. And that is not bound to it's name. My feeling part of that community, attempting to contribute to the project somehow did not change when openSUSE was started.

Atm I think that we do need to go for a long term solution, hence include what may happen f.e. when SUSE's owners bring it to some Stock Exchange. It's shareholders on such an occasion might simply split it into parts to sell, parts to kill. A different name, own trademarks thus would also directly relate to financial indepence/less dependence. The relationship with SUSE is something I would like to keep, and one of the things I could imagine is to include a paragraph in the Foundation's charter that describes that, incl. a mutual agreement to confirm that relationship once a year or something like that. A reminder: let's please have this discussion as community members amongst eachother. It's about the future of the project and community, and I sincerely believe that we all want what's best for both, in the long term. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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.

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 ;-) ] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi guys,

Em 3 de jun de 2019, à(s) 05:35, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> escreveu:

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

IMHO, definitely not… now. It takes time to build a brand, and openSUSE is a very good one. The points in favor that I read on this thread, again IMHO, do not seem to justify the cons. I remember when Leap 15.0 was proposed. The very controversial numbering system (from 42.3 to 15.0) was proposed to keep openSUSE in line with SLE. Now, one year later, there is a discussion to change the name which will completely break this “alignment”. Everything will be very confusing (again) to the users who are not reading this thread. My suggestion: give the Foundation another name (Gecko foundation, Lizard foundation, Green foundation, whatever…), keep the openSUSE name for the distribution, and change the logo if necessary. When we reach a point that the points in favor of name changing are clearly more interesting than the cons, then just drop openSUSE in favor of Tumbleweed and Leap. Best regards, Ronan Arraes -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 at 10:23, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:

- If we continue using the name openSUSE in any way, manner, or form, SUSE will be duty bound to ensure that openSUSE does not conduct any actions which hurts its brand or trademark. This will mean that, alongside any agreement the Project has to use the name "openSUSE", there will be strings attached. Such restrictions could be in the form of the status quo - currently SUSE have a veto right over any actions in the openSUSE community, a power trusted into it's Chairman, me. This is a right I am on the record of being uncomfortable with, and thankfully have never needed to use, but I totally understand the need of it from a corporate perspective - openSUSE can't be allowed to go making deals that undermines SUSE's business, gives it a bad name in public, or otherwise makes things more complicated for either organisation. SUSE's Veto right also means that we have been able to forgo having long detailed lists of restrictions on what openSUSE can do. However, if SUSEs veto right is lost in the Project's transition to a Foundation (and that might be necessary to ensure the Foundation is seen as a clearly separate legal entity), I would expect SUSE will require a significant amount of detailed restrictions on the activities the Foundation will be able to conduct. Negotiating and finding a mutually satisfactory set of terms and conditions will take a lot of time and effort, and such restrictions will limit the scope and extent of the Foundation to receive sponsorships, money, services, etc.

Also consider this (theoretical but based on past reality) example Imagine a company or umbrella foundation that wants to start some new open source project and wants to involve openSUSE in that effort. The project is starting up and wants to keep things private until the initial partnerships are established and can be launched properly as a cohesive new thing. Therefore initial discussions are likely to be done under the terms and conditions of non-disclosure agreements. Currently, any such NDA can only be signed by SUSE, as openSUSE's defacto legal entity. Even if SUSE were to sign the NDA on behalf of openSUSE, SUSE will in practice be accepting liability for the actions of openSUSE at large, which may expose SUSE to significant risk. Can SUSE trust the openSUSE community to upheld it's obligations to an NDA SUSE signed on its behalf? I think it's fair to expect SUSE to be a little nervous about such arrangements. Therefore its my experience that SUSE are only going to sign NDAs which are also in their business interest, which may not be aligned with the interest to the openSUSE community at large. I feel this means openSUSE potentially misses out on some of the more interesting aspects of the open source world when companies and larger open source federations are involved. If our Project forms a foundation, any only uses trademarks, that don't have "SUSE" in the name, then the Foundation will likely be in a much more free place to involve itself in such opportunities. If we continue to use the name "SUSE" in any significant way, the Project likely to retain at least some complications and/or limitations in this area, as SUSE will have grounds for ensuring their/our shared trademarks are only used in ways they are comfortable. Do I think such an arrangement would the end of the world? Nope Do I think it's possible we could find compromises that makes almost everyone happy? Absolutely But I do think this example illustrates some of the factors we need to consider on this topic besides the emotive "but we like the current name" feeling :) Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 at 14:11, Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 11.06.19 um 14:06 schrieb Richard Brown:

...

But I do think this example illustrates some of the factors we need to consider on this topic besides the emotive "but we like the current name" feeling :)

I'd suggest to start thinking about a name change for the project (not the foundation!, the foundation can be named whatever you want) once reports of such progress hindering events that happened to impact the future of the project because it was still named "openSUSE" have been seen in reality.

Right now that feels to me like (lots of) "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt".

And the more I read of it, the more I think "no fscking way am I going to support a name change".

;-)

I understand your point of view. Hopefully you can understand that there is no way I will ever share the past examples of sponsorships, service arrangements, or other contracts that have already fallen apart due to the current "SUSE is not openSUSE" discrepancy, which will be no different if we have a "FOOFoundation is not openSUSE" discrepancy. Our conference organisers, other Board members, and myself, are not imagining this problem. We've all seen it. But we cant really do more than talk about it at a high level and ask you all to trust us..as the alternative would involve throwing sympathetic organisations who wanted to work closer with openSUSE under a bus by naming and shaming them. And that would be rather impolite ;) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2019-06-11T14:24:09, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:

Hopefully you can understand that there is no way I will ever share the past examples of sponsorships, service arrangements, or other contracts that have already fallen apart due to the current "SUSE is not openSUSE" discrepancy, which will be no different if we have a "FOOFoundation is not openSUSE" discrepancy.

Looking at the implications of IP laws regarding copyrights, word marks, logos etc (as we're building up the Ceph Foundation's policy), and having seen some of that in the past, and even seeing how some FLOSS projects (try to) use the mark to monetize their projects etc, I'm not entirely ignorant of the challenges even if not well acquainted with the specific cases. Still. I believe *both* SUSE *and* openSUSE benefit from this relationship, and its visibility. Personally, as an employee (which make up a fair share of the openSUSE contributors, even if clearly not all and perhaps not even the majority!), it fills me with pride to be running "my" Open Source distribution. I'd be personally and emotionally dismayed if that were to change. Rebuilding the openSUSE brand would be costly for openSUSE. Very much so. Name changes confuse people. For a long, long time. openSUSE would lose the (hopefully positive) impact of "SUSE" on our perception. SUSE would lose significant community visibility. In short, my position can be summarized as "*anything* but a name change". If there are issues that you really believe are more significant than the certain huge negative impact, these need addressing, sure.

But we cant really do more than talk about it at a high level and ask you all to trust us..as the alternative would involve throwing sympathetic organisations who wanted to work closer with openSUSE under a bus by naming and shaming them.

I do trust you that this problem exists. I cannot, without knowing more details, agree that I believe the cost/benefit analysis would support changing the name. Because, even if what you experienced was certainly real, all those events happened anyway. Yes, as long as the marks are shared/derivative, guidelines must exist and be enforced. Not even because SUSE wants to, but because marks need to be protected lest they dilute and eventually no longer can stand. Even if the openSUSE-foundation-that-isn't-called-openSUSE-foundation had its very own marks, you'd have to do so and establish guidelines. e.g., not everyone could call their event "FOODistro Summit" without your approval either. Perhaps the real discussion is around the sub-licensing terms for the derivative marks. I understand those can't happen out entirely in the open for legal/contractual reasons, but are you truly saying that SUSE and openSUSE have not been able to work out a sufficiently flexible and light-weight (as far as it can be) agreement that meets your needs? Because then, as I'm trying to look into something similar-ish, I'd really like some internal pointers so we can bring this up when the Ceph Foundation shapes the Ceph marks guidelines ... Regards, Lars -- Architect SDS, Distinguished Engineer SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) "Architects should open possibilities and not determine everything." (Ueli Zbinden) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On czw, cze 13, 2019 at 11:14 PM, Ronan Chagas <ronisbr@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Em 13 de jun de 2019, à(s) 07:53, Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb@suse.com> escreveu:

Rebuilding the openSUSE brand would be costly for openSUSE. Very much so. Name changes confuse people. For a long, long time. openSUSE would lose the (hopefully positive) impact of "SUSE" on our perception.

SUSE would lose significant community visibility.

I confess I am very aligned with the position of Lars, but I also understand the legal problems it can arise by keeping SUSE in the name.

I will try to propose something in the middle:

It seems that the Foundation is happening. Let’s choose a name that will fit fine in a Linux distro, but as a foundation behind openSUSE Linux. Then, with the Foundation established and with all trustees or whatever they will be called, it can officially approach SUSE to try to make an arrangement about the use of the name / trademark openSUSE. Do you think this is possible? Because, after this, it will be crystal clear what we will win and what we will loose.

Eh, this is project name, not distribution name discussion. Distributions are already called Tumbleweed and Leap, and openSUSE is used with those just as a discriminator, because both Leap and Tumbleweed are very generic on their own and even then, I tried very hard to limit the amount of times we do mention openSUSE throughout the branding. Anyway, openSUSE Linux does not exist since 13.2, so 2014/2015, and it's not coming back... LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2019-06-14T08:38:30, Christian Imhorst <datenteiler@opensuse.org> wrote:

yes that's right. So first let's build the Geeko Foundation with a different name than openSUSE but with new logos. And in a next step let's think about to drop the name part openSUSE from the distros Leap, Tumbleweed etc.

I am not a fan of the direction of moving away from calling openSUSE, well, openSUSE. Such a move would alienate me as both a user and developer (miniscule my actual contributions in code to Tumbleweed/Factory may be). -- SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) "Architects should open possibilities and not determine everything." (Ueli Zbinden) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

W dniu 14.06.2019 o 18:57, Stasiek Michalski pisze:

On pią, cze 14, 2019 at 5:57 PM, Lars Marowsky-Bree <lmb@suse.com> wrote:

...

On 2019-06-14T08:38:30, Christian Imhorst <datenteiler@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

 yes that's right. So first let's build the Geeko Foundation with a different  name than openSUSE but with new logos. And in a next step let's think about  to drop the name part openSUSE from the distros Leap, Tumbleweed etc.

I am not a fan of the direction of moving away from calling openSUSE, well, openSUSE. Such a move would alienate me as both a user and developer (miniscule my actual contributions in code to Tumbleweed/Factory may be).

openSUSE Project does way more than distributions, calling distributions openSUSE as more than a discriminator is an injustice to other software made by the openSUSE Project. Obviously unless we start saying openSUSE before every piece of software made by openSUSE: * openSUSE Open Build Service * openSUSE software.openSUSE.org * openSUSE OSEM * openSUSE Zypper * openSUSE libZypp * openSUSE Snapper * openSUSE YaST * openSUSE libstorage-ng * openSUSE etc. It just becomes a mouthful quick.

If we do require that Tumbleweed, Kubic, MicroOS and Leap do have `openSUSE` always attached to it, it will also get annoying fast.

Let me repeat this sentence with that rule in place:

If we do require that openSUSE Tumbleweed, openSUSE Kubic, openSUSE MicroOS and openSUSE Leap do have `openSUSE` always attached to it, it will also get annoying fast.

Redundant, isn't it? Mention openSUSE once within one of the first sentences in an article and you know what the article refers to anyway.

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

I agree that adding "openSUSE" to every project name might get annoying, but I always thought I was using distributions named "openSUSE Leap" and "openSUSE Tumbleweed". I'm not saying that we should now rename Kubic or MicroOS. I'm just adding my 2 cents about what my perception was.

On Friday, 14 June 2019 22:46 Ronan Chagas wrote:

Hi LCP,

...

Em 14 de jun de 2019, ?(s) 13:57, Stasiek Michalski <hellcp@opensuse.org> escreveu:

If we do require that openSUSE Tumbleweed, openSUSE Kubic, openSUSE MicroOS and openSUSE Leap do have `openSUSE` always attached to it, it will also get annoying fast.

What is the point? Isn?t this similar to the discussion about GNU/Linux vs Linux?

I would rather say "Apache" vs. "The Apache http server" (or whatever the official name is supposed to be) - except Apache Foundation doesn't seem to be so jealous of its flagship project. With "GNU/Linux" it's somene else who fighting the holy war for "proper name". Come on, we _do_ want people to answer the question "Which distribution are you using?" with "openSUSE". If we try to convince them to answer "Leap" and if we succeed, the response will most likely be "Hm, never heard about that one." Is it in our interest to pretend there are two distributions, "Tumbleweed" and "Leap", rather than two flavors of one "openSUSE"? Hell no, that's path to becoming one (two, actually) of the hundreds (thousands?) nameless distributions for handful of people. This is really getting out of hand... :-( Michal Kubecek -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Monday, 17 June 2019 11:59:40 CEST Richard Brown wrote:

While SUSE does not wish to formally rule anything out at this time, their opinion is that, if the openSUSE Project was to formally request that SUSE transfers ownership of the openSUSE trademarks to the Foundation, then SUSE would almost certainly have to decline that request. This is because it is highly unlikely any trademark law anywhere would be compatible with the idea of a legally separate organisation owning a trademark that contains another organisations trademark.

This comes as no surprise.

One possibility open for consideration is the idea of licensing the openSUSE Marks to the Foundation. Such a thing will need to happen even if the Foundation forms under a different name but if we were to wish to continue using the openSUSE name in our distributions. It is possible that such a license could be exclusive and maybe non-revokable. But any such license will likely have to come with conditions, which could restrict Foundation from some activities which could be seen to be competition with SUSE's business of providing support for software. While there is further investigation required, it is not expected that any such restriction would impact openSUSE's current activities which include 3rd parties redistributing openSUSE in a commercial setting (Box sets, pre-installed on hardware, hosting).

As far as the foundation is able to act freely within a fair scope of actions this is fine for me.

I think the discussion has reached a point where as a Project we should consider a straight 'Yes/No' vote for the question of "Should openSUSE continue to use the openSUSE name and trademarks?"

Wish I'd be a member already. Nonetheless, I think you guys will make a well considered and careful decision.

I will be voting "Yes" for the proposed question or any similarly worded referendum on this topic. I feel the best course forward would be for openSUSE to continue to use the name openSUSE, and I'm mostly comfortable with the Project's ability to stomach the consequences of such a decision.

The only way I could see myself changing that opinion would be that, as we negotiation the details around the Foundation, if any legal/tax or other circumstances were to arise that would limit openSUSE's ability to be reused and redistributed at least as widely as it is today.

But we can reopen such a topic if we find such a condition arising.

One open question left. If you already answered it, excuse me, I lost track of the conversation a bit. Is this YES a yes to use the openSUSE name and trademark for the foundation, too, or only for use with the distributions and we will still figure out a different name for the foundation? Kind regards Pierre -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 17/06/2019 19:29, Richard Brown wrote:

Top posting because I'm not responding to a single post but is still relevant to the thread as a whole.

I've had a chat with our friends at SUSE Legal about this topic, especially the possibility of the Foundation owning / controlling the trademark.

While SUSE does not wish to formally rule anything out at this time, their opinion is that, if the openSUSE Project was to formally request that SUSE transfers ownership of the openSUSE trademarks to the Foundation, then SUSE would almost certainly have to decline that request. This is because it is highly unlikely any trademark law anywhere would be compatible with the idea of a legally separate organisation owning a trademark that contains another organisations trademark.

One possibility open for consideration is the idea of licensing the openSUSE Marks to the Foundation. Such a thing will need to happen even if the Foundation forms under a different name but if we were to wish to continue using the openSUSE name in our distributions. It is possible that such a license could be exclusive and maybe non-revokable. But any such license will likely have to come with conditions, which could restrict Foundation from some activities which could be seen to be competition with SUSE's business of providing support for software. While there is further investigation required, it is not expected that any such restriction would impact openSUSE's current activities which include 3rd parties redistributing openSUSE in a commercial setting (Box sets, pre-installed on hardware, hosting).

And it should go without saying, but for absolute clarity, there isn't a desire from SUSE to overly restrict the openSUSE community from being able to do what it wants. Whatever the community decides to request in regards to the Foundation, Trademarks, etc, there will be an extensive effort to find the most reasonable accommodating solution that works well for all involved.

I think the discussion has reached a point where as a Project we should consider a straight 'Yes/No' vote for the question of "Should openSUSE continue to use the openSUSE name and trademarks?"

If there are no objections I'll be reaching out to Stasiek and other volunteers to start the process of a formal member vote this week.

Personally I'd rather wait slightly and just run one series of votes at the same time for this the, branding / logo changes and possibly an initial foundation concept vote (if there isn't broad support for continuing that discussion further). Unless there is good reason to get the name debate out and done now then defer the others until later (obviously the final foundation vote will need to happen much after this one because the name part will be kinda important. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 1:37 PM Ronan Chagas <ronisbr@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Richard,

...

Em 11 de jun de 2019, à(s) 09:06, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> escreveu:

But I do think this example illustrates some of the factors we need to consider on this topic besides the emotive "but we like the current name" feeling :)

Indeed this was very informative. I was not thinking that deep. Well, now you gave me an understandable “case study".

One question: openSUSE has a massive investment of SUSE, there are many SUSE employees that work with openSUSE. Do you think that when everything becomes a new Linux distro, managed by the new foundation, will SUSE eventually decrease the investment? I mean, in a long time frame, can we start to loose the support of such big company?

To put it bluntly, it wouldn't be the first time that SUSE has done something like that to openSUSE. This project has gone through a period in which SUSE barely invested anything into openSUSE and survived. I'm fairly confident we'd be okay if we had to weather another storm like that. -- 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

On 6/11/19 7:40 PM, Neal Gompa wrote:

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 1:37 PM Ronan Chagas <ronisbr@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Richard,

...

Em 11 de jun de 2019, à(s) 09:06, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> escreveu:

But I do think this example illustrates some of the factors we need to consider on this topic besides the emotive "but we like the current name" feeling :)

Indeed this was very informative. I was not thinking that deep. Well, now you gave me an understandable “case study".

One question: openSUSE has a massive investment of SUSE, there are many SUSE employees that work with openSUSE. Do you think that when everything becomes a new Linux distro, managed by the new foundation, will SUSE eventually decrease the investment? I mean, in a long time frame, can we start to loose the support of such big company?

To put it bluntly, it wouldn't be the first time that SUSE has done something like that to openSUSE. This project has gone through a period in which SUSE barely invested anything into openSUSE and survived. I'm fairly confident we'd be okay if we had to weather another storm like that.

I think you are underestimating the amount of resources (of all types) SUSE has put into openSUSE in all periods, even in those in which, as you wrote, "SUSE barely invested anything". To my eyes (being both a SUSE employee and a community contributor) the connection between openSUSE and SUSE is stronger and closer of what some people in this thread seem to believe. I seriously doubt any of both would survive without the other. Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 12 June 2019 10:02:55 CEST Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

I think you are underestimating the amount of resources (of all types) SUSE has put into openSUSE in all periods, even in those in which, as you wrote, "SUSE barely invested anything".

To my eyes (being both a SUSE employee and a community contributor) the connection between openSUSE and SUSE is stronger and closer of what some people in this thread seem to believe. I seriously doubt any of both would survive without the other.

I am not as involved as you are, Ancor, but I do have no doubt that both could survive without one another. Nonetheless that is nothing anyone would ever really want to aim for and I seriously doubt that a foundation of a different name than openSUSE does harm our connection. I already made that comparison but I will write it here again: You don't need to be married and have the same last name to be a couple. It even can help the relationship if each stays or gains some degree of independence. Forming a bond between those two brands then might be as valuable as sharing a brand. All that is speculation. And will be until the point where we have to define the rules of a newly formed relationship between the community backed by their own foundation and brand and SUSE as a company. This can define the degree of support and what SUSE will continue to contribute in resources etc. Well, all this given the fact that we as a community decide that we really want to make the step into that degree of independence. I am still in favor of this way but I wouldn't be sad if we decide to stay with the current brand. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hello Geekos, sorry for my late reply. Am 03.06.2019 10:35 schrieb Richard Brown:

So whatever your views, please sound off in this thread, even if your view is already echoed by others.

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

After reading 130+ emails I have changed my mind on this topic after each e-mail I have read. Finally I think I support the idea to have a different name for the foundation - like e.g. "Geeko Foundation" - and to stay with openSUSE for Tumbleweed and Leap. I am afraid that renaming openSUSE would not be like Fedeora vs. RedHat. It would be more like OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice where many people are confused and they don't know wich one to choose. And if one day SUSE don't want that we use openSUSE in our names anymore we can drop it and just use Tumbleweed and Leap. With this construction we can easily answer the question: "Who is in charge of openSUSE?" with "The openSUSE community, represented legally by the Geeko Foundation, because they like to call themselves Geekos". ;-) And I think that in the present age being in a very close relationship with an innovative Open Source company like SUSE is a huge benefit for openSUSE. We really should not change our brand without a need, when this has no benefit to the brand. Have a lot of fun, Christian Imhorst -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On czw, cze 13, 2019 at 9:19 PM, Jim Henderson <hendersj@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 11:28:25 +0200, Christian Imhorst wrote:

...

I am afraid that renaming openSUSE would not be like Fedeora vs. RedHat. It would be more like OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice where many people are confused and they don't know wich one to choose.

Why would it be more like OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice? If openSUSE changed its name to something else, the openSUSE name would not be in concurrent use with whatever came next.

The biggest issue with OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice is that the Apache has not really given up all the hope for their OpenOffice, the brand exists and new releases of OpenOffice still come out. This is significantly different from our situation, where we would hope after some time openSUSE name would stop existing entirely. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 08:47 +0000, Tomas Chvatal wrote:

What I would like to see is to have a proper vote in helios (like when we vote for board members) first with 'rename/no rename' and if rename wins then with the various possible names to be selected.

Also given the importance of the first decision it would be nice to have something more than 50% of the votes but to make sure we have more than X of the all electorate voting and (to avoid brainsplit when we could get 50.2% in favor of one option).

+1 A vote for something big like this really should happen -- Marcel Kühlhorn Have a lot of fun!

Hi all, Le lundi 03 juin 2019 à 11:03:02, Richard Brown a écrit :

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:00, Marcel Kühlhorn <tux93@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 08:47 +0000, Tomas Chvatal wrote:

...

What I would like to see is to have a proper vote in helios (like when we vote for board members) first with 'rename/no rename' and if rename wins then with the various possible names to be selected.

Also given the importance of the first decision it would be nice to have something more than 50% of the votes but to make sure we have more than X of the all electorate voting and (to avoid brainsplit when we could get 50.2% in favor of one option).

+1

A vote for something big like this really should happen

Sure, but it's a lot of work requiring a lot of effort from a lot of volunteers that will likely take a great deal of time over a number of weeks.

And those volunteers need to know their efforts are going to be worth it..so the discussion is more important than just agreeing with the (obvious) requirement to have voting at the end.

So what is your view on the actual topic of renaming the Project?

I feel as well that it can be a great opportunity to let the world know about the important changes going on amongst the project. But of course there will be a lot of technical issues to solve and it will require a *huge* work of communication. What I like to know is if the issues with the trademark can be overcome or not. I do understand that it will be limitating at so point, but what consequences are we to expect ? We must make a clear list of the benefits vs. the threats for the project. -- 'When there is no more room at school, the dumb will walk the Earth.' Sébastien 'sogal' Poher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le lundi 03 juin 2019 à 02:17:46, Richard Brown a écrit :

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 13:53, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher <sogal@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

What I like to know is if the issues with the trademark can be overcome or not. I do understand that it will be limitating at so point, but what consequences are we to expect ?

My expectation would be that if we do not change the name, an "openSUSE Foundation" would likely face much stricter restrictions on what it can use the openSUSE Trademark for, and stricter limitations on allowing other people or organisations to use the trademark. [...]

So, taking that as an example, my expectation would be that if we go down this road of having a Foundation without a rename, we could end up in a very similar situation to ownCloud.

The openSUSE Project could lose the current influence that it enjoys regarding the use of its trademark due to the unique nature of the openSUSE Board simultaneously being representative of the community and the company. This unique legal duplicity (where the Board can be seen to be 'part of SUSE'..at least through my role) will not be the case under an openSUSE Foundation. Even with all plans ensuring SUSE will retains influence and a close relationship over the Foundation, for all legal matters regarding Trademarks and such, I am almost 100% certain the entities will NEED to be considered separately, leading to the comparative reduction in community influence over the openSUSE Marks compared to the status quo.

The removal of the communities influence regarding the Project's Trademark is a situation I personally would find very distasteful, which is why I outright reject Sarah's suggestion that ownCloud is an example we should aim to emulate in this case.

They stand as a good example of a 'worst case'..the sort of worst case we'd be able to avoid by renaming the Project.

Thank you for this input and the analysis of the ownCloud example. Maybe the ownCloud example is not the only possible solution. Is there no such thing as "trademark delegation", where SUSE still owns the name but delegate us the right to use as we please ? If not I think that it is the unique opportunity that this project will have to make such a big change (I'm talking about the name change here). That would be a pity to do a lot of work to set up a foundation in order to gain more independance and, in a few years, to be blocked in some projects we may have in the future "just" because of a trademark issue. As some participants to this thread said, a lot of people are confused (or keep on confusing themselves) between the names SUSE and openSUSE, some of them even think that "it is the same". Having our own, different name may help us to that regard. But changing the name will require a huge amount of work, in all the aspects of the project. Do we have the manpower it requires ? -- 'When there is no more room at school, the dumb will walk the Earth.' Sébastien 'sogal' Poher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 8:06 PM, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher <sogal@opensuse.org> wrote:

Le lundi 03 juin 2019 à 02:17:46, Richard Brown a écrit :

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 13:53, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher <sogal@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

What I like to know is if the issues with the trademark can be overcome or not. I do understand that it will be limitating at so point, but what consequences are we to expect ?

My expectation would be that if we do not change the name, an "openSUSE Foundation" would likely face much stricter restrictions on what it can use the openSUSE Trademark for, and stricter limitations on allowing other people or organisations to use the trademark. [...]

So, taking that as an example, my expectation would be that if we go down this road of having a Foundation without a rename, we could end up in a very similar situation to ownCloud.

The openSUSE Project could lose the current influence that it enjoys regarding the use of its trademark due to the unique nature of the openSUSE Board simultaneously being representative of the community and the company. This unique legal duplicity (where the Board can be seen to be 'part of SUSE'..at least through my role) will not be the case under an openSUSE Foundation. Even with all plans ensuring SUSE will retains influence and a close relationship over the Foundation, for all legal matters regarding Trademarks and such, I am almost 100% certain the entities will NEED to be considered separately, leading to the comparative reduction in community influence over the openSUSE Marks compared to the status quo.

The removal of the communities influence regarding the Project's Trademark is a situation I personally would find very distasteful, which is why I outright reject Sarah's suggestion that ownCloud is an example we should aim to emulate in this case.

They stand as a good example of a 'worst case'..the sort of worst case we'd be able to avoid by renaming the Project.

Thank you for this input and the analysis of the ownCloud example. Maybe the ownCloud example is not the only possible solution. Is there no such thing as "trademark delegation", where SUSE still owns the name but delegate us the right to use as we please ?

In __any__ case, be it with SUSE signing a contract with us for use SUSE part of openSUSE or letting us use openSUSE, but them still owning the trademark, if they go down, we go down with them. There is no way around this part. There is a chance of them giving us some sovereignty with signing a contract to use SUSE as part of the brand name, but it's a patch, not a fix, their branch changes too much: we need to remake the patch from scratch.

If not I think that it is the unique opportunity that this project will have to make such a big change (I'm talking about the name change here). That would be a pity to do a lot of work to set up a foundation in order to gain more independance and, in a few years, to be blocked in some projects we may have in the future "just" because of a trademark issue.

I would call this "the only" opportunity, we have very slim chance of getting name change in an established foundation, with established trademark, which will cost additional money, which foundation won't have out of nowhere. This kind of discussion really needs to happen before anything is set in stone.

As some participants to this thread said, a lot of people are confused (or keep on confusing themselves) between the names SUSE and openSUSE, some of them even think that "it is the same". Having our own, different name may help us to that regard.

But changing the name will require a huge amount of work, in all the aspects of the project. Do we have the manpower it requires ?

Change wouldn't have to be instant obviously, and nothing wouldn't need to be backported, because there is no point. After the codebase is dead, it's dead, so the most we would have to sign with SUSE would be an agreement to continue using the name until our current distributions (or the entire Leap 15 series) are EOL. That's ~2 years to rebrand (if we reach the conclusion quickly at least). Whatever the conclusion ends up being, I will just have more work to do in artwork/branding repositories, and I don't mind this at all (I will have to work on logos/colours/fonts etc anyway ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 21:47, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 13:53, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher <sogal@opensuse.org> wrote:

...

What I like to know is if the issues with the trademark can be overcome or not. I do understand that it will be limitating at so point, but what consequences are we to expect ?

My expectation would be that if we do not change the name, an "openSUSE Foundation" would likely face much stricter restrictions on what it can use the openSUSE Trademark for, and stricter limitations on allowing other people or organisations to use the trademark.

Using Sarah's example of the ownCloud situation as a reference.

OwnCloud GmbH (the company) have Trademark guidelines based on our openSUSE ones. https://owncloud.org/trademark/

With the key difference being any discussions regarding exceptional use is decided by ownCloud GmbH - trademark@owncloud.com. (note the '.com', not 'org')

In openSUSE's case, the first point of contact regarding any trademark discussions is the openSUSE Board (board@opensuse.org to be precise). The Board then take it onboard in the interests of the community, and negotiate with SUSE when required.

This is quite unlike the ownCloud Foundation who seem to have absolutely no say, rights to grant use, or control over the ownCloud Trademark in any way manner or form.

https://foundation.owncloud.org/#communitycontinuity

The only rights the ownCloud Foundation have documented is a limited right to use the text version of "ownCloud", which could be elevated to full ownership of the trademark in the event of ownCloud GmbH no longer existing.

So, taking that as an example, my expectation would be that if we go down this road of having a Foundation without a rename, we could end up in a very similar situation to ownCloud.

The openSUSE Project could lose the current influence that it enjoys regarding the use of its trademark due to the unique nature of the openSUSE Board simultaneously being representative of the community and the company. This unique legal duplicity (where the Board can be seen to be 'part of SUSE'..at least through my role) will not be the case under an openSUSE Foundation. Even with all plans ensuring SUSE will retains influence and a close relationship over the Foundation, for all legal matters regarding Trademarks and such, I am almost 100% certain the entities will NEED to be considered separately, leading to the comparative reduction in community influence over the openSUSE Marks compared to the status quo.

The removal of the communities influence regarding the Project's Trademark is a situation I personally would find very distasteful, which is why I outright reject Sarah's suggestion that ownCloud is an example we should aim to emulate in this case.

They stand as a good example of a 'worst case'..the sort of worst case we'd be able to avoid by renaming the Project.

At the same time its a "Worst case" and currently we have no advice as to what any restrictions over the current status quo there would be for an openSUSE Foundation. It is probably something we really should get cleared up before voting on the name change so members have a clear idea of what they are / are not voting for. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Monday, June 3, 2019 10:47:25 AM CEST Tomas Chvatal wrote:

I will not add much for the discussion as Richard quite nicely explained why it would make sense to re-brand everything. OTOH indeed we would completely lose all the browine points we have right now with the openSUSE name.

I am also concerned about this too. Over the time openSUSE drag a bit of good and bad press. For one side the project have one of the coolest set of technology stack that I am aware of (OBS, openQA, linuxrc, YaST, zypper / libsolv, Factory / Tumbleweed, MicoOS, ...) I am not sure that this is widely known outside the project by the casual Linux user. But on the other side the name have some old history. SUSE is an old company, and openSUSE is perceived as a traditional distribution, instead of the highly innovative distro that is today. Also mistakes has been done. Changing the name will make openSUSE to lost a bit of his/her good history, but will give the chance to the marketing guys to re-orientate some of the messages, and provide a more up-to-date perception of what is the project about.

What I would like to see is to have a proper vote in helios (like when we vote for board members) first with 'rename/no rename' and if rename wins then with the various possible names to be selected.

I agree. But I would like to have a bit more discussion to be aware of the implications of changing the name. I am still ambivalent, and I am not sure what I will vote.

Also given the importance of the first decision it would be nice to have something more than 50% of the votes but to make sure we have more than X of the all electorate voting and (to avoid brainsplit when we could get 50.2% in favor of one option).

This sound like a referendum : ) But I agree, quorum and vote difference is relevant here. -- SUSE Linux GmbH Maxfeldstrasse 5 90409 Nuernberg Germany GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

I'd absolutely support the referendum! I see both pros and cons. Having some actual numbers would help.

...

...

Alberto Planas Dominguez <aplanas@suse.de> 06/03/19 11:05 AM >>> On Monday, June 3, 2019 10:47:25 AM CEST Tomas Chvatal wrote:

I will not add much for the discussion as Richard quite nicely explained why it would make sense to re-brand everything. OTOH indeed we would completely lose all the browine points we have right now with the openSUSE name.

I am also concerned about this too. Over the time openSUSE drag a bit of good and bad press. For one side the project have one of the coolest set of technology stack that I am aware of (OBS, openQA, linuxrc, YaST, zypper / libsolv, Factory / Tumbleweed, MicoOS, ...) I am not sure that this is widely known outside the project by the casual Linux user. But on the other side the name have some old history. SUSE is an old company, and openSUSE is perceived as a traditional distribution, instead of the highly innovative distro that is today. Also mistakes has been done. Changing the name will make openSUSE to lost a bit of his/her good history, but will give the chance to the marketing guys to re-orientate some of the messages, and provide a more up-to-date perception of what is the project about.

What I would like to see is to have a proper vote in helios (like when we vote for board members) first with 'rename/no rename' and if rename wins then with the various possible names to be selected.

I agree. But I would like to have a bit more discussion to be aware of the implications of changing the name. I am still ambivalent, and I am not sure what I will vote.

Also given the importance of the first decision it would be nice to have something more than 50% of the votes but to make sure we have more than X of the all electorate voting and (to avoid brainsplit when we could get 50.2% in favor of one option).

This sound like a referendum : ) But I agree, quorum and vote difference is relevant here. -- SUSE Linux GmbH Maxfeldstrasse 5 90409 Nuernberg Germany GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Dne pondělí 3. června 2019 10:47:25 CEST, Tomas Chvatal napsal(a):

What I would like to see is to have a proper vote in helios (like when we vote for board members) first with 'rename/no rename' and if rename wins then with the various possible names to be selected. Also given the importance of the first decision it would be nice to have something more than 50% of the votes but to make sure we have more than X of the all electorate voting and (to avoid brainsplit when we could get 50.2% in favor of one option).

Yes, just as also pointed out elsewhere, it must be very clear what we are voting for, what are all consequences of all possible decisions, e.g. legal, all practical, and so on. -- Vojtěch Zeisek Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/ https://trapa.cz/

On Monday, June 3, 2019 11:47:41 AM CEST Maurizio Galli (MauG) wrote:

IMO we should vote on the re-branding as a "package" first and then decide what to do.

I consider the logo and the name as different issues, as we can: * change nothing * change the logo * change the logo and the project name But if we decide for a full rename, do we have a time-table about how much time do we have for the transition? Renaming all domains, OBS projects and metadata, the github namespace, the multiple review bots, osc, IRC channels, packages trademarks, etc, etc is not something that we can do without a very long transition period. Actually, I am not sure that this is something feasible. -- SUSE Linux GmbH Maxfeldstrasse 5 90409 Nuernberg Germany GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 6/3/19 6:00 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:53, Alberto Planas Dominguez <aplanas@suse.de> wrote:

...

On Monday, June 3, 2019 11:47:41 AM CEST Maurizio Galli (MauG) wrote:

...

IMO we should vote on the re-branding as a "package" first and then decide what to do.

I consider the logo and the name as different issues, as we can:

* change nothing * change the logo * change the logo and the project name

I agree - I see the logo and project name discussions are somewhat separate. I think we can do nothing, we can change the logo without changing the name, and if we change the name we will absolutely need to change change the logo

So I'm favouring discussing the name change first, we can work back from there :)

Yes I kinda like this approach. -- Maurizio Galli (MauG) Xfce Team https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Xfce -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 19:44, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 11:53 AM, Alberto Planas Dominguez <aplanas@suse.de> wrote:

...

On Monday, June 3, 2019 11:47:41 AM CEST Maurizio Galli (MauG) wrote:

...

 IMO we should vote on the  re-branding as a "package" first and then decide what to do.

I consider the logo and the name as different issues, as we can:

* change nothing * change the logo * change the logo and the project name

But if we decide for a full rename, do we have a time-table about how much time do we have for the transition?

Renaming all domains, OBS projects and metadata, the github namespace, the multiple review bots, osc, IRC channels, packages trademarks, etc, etc is not something that we can do without a very long transition period.

Actually, I am not sure that this is something feasible.

I can have all the repos in our Github renamed by Monday, and all the obs submission next month, my resume includes: https://github.com/yast/yast-yast2/issues/934 redoing all of YaST naming conventions in desktop files...

Its more then just a few obs submissions, for example every official repo and most repo's in devel projects + home projects list openSUSE in the repository name, changing the repository names will be messy because it will also involve changing everyones zypper config, on the other hand maybe we can get more standard/consistent naming of "openSUSE_Factory" vs "openSUSE_Tumbleweed" across devel repo's because that is a mess atm. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/06/2019 20:15, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:30 PM, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:

...

On 03/06/2019 19:44, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

...

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 11:53 AM, Alberto Planas Dominguez <aplanas@suse.de> wrote:

...

On Monday, June 3, 2019 11:47:41 AM CEST Maurizio Galli (MauG) wrote:

...

 IMO we should vote on the  re-branding as a "package" first and then decide what to do.

I consider the logo and the name as different issues, as we can:

* change nothing * change the logo * change the logo and the project name

But if we decide for a full rename, do we have a time-table about how much time do we have for the transition?

Renaming all domains, OBS projects and metadata, the github namespace, the multiple review bots, osc, IRC channels, packages trademarks, etc, etc is not something that we can do without a very long transition period.

Actually, I am not sure that this is something feasible.

I can have all the repos in our Github renamed by Monday, and all the obs submission next month, my resume includes: https://github.com/yast/yast-yast2/issues/934 redoing all of YaST naming conventions in desktop files...

Its more then just a few obs submissions, for example every official repo and most repo's in devel projects + home projects list openSUSE in the repository name, changing the repository names will be messy because it will also involve changing everyones zypper config, on the other hand maybe we can get more standard/consistent naming of "openSUSE_Factory" vs "openSUSE_Tumbleweed" across devel repo's because that is a mess atm.

Well, new name would be a new devel project, wouldn't it? Then everybody would need to switch that manually unless it was linked, that's how you *could* fix it.

It would be nice to fix it without causing everyone to have twice as many repo's enabled for building for whatever we decide as a transition period. I guess leap for example will stay as is until it goes end of life and the repo's are dropped. I'm sure there is a way, but its not as quick and simple as what you suggested. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 11:18:26 CEST Mathias Homann wrote:

Am 2019-06-03 08:01, schrieb Stasiek Michalski:

...

Hi,

Here's just one little bit of food for thought.

I was just chitchatting with a coworker about this, and he said:

"If opensuse changes their name whey will be just one of many unknown / new linux distributions, while right now they are one of the market leaders"

Do we really WANT to be "just some small new distro" instead one of the big five?

Cheers MH

Hi Mathias, I don't think that we are becoming "just some small new distro". The Community stays the same, only with a strong supporting foundation behind it. Neither are we cutting the ties to SUSE, nor do we rebase the distro on any other technological basis. Leap will continue to be Leap, and same applies to Tumbleweed and the openSUSE project. I am sure that a name change and the new build foundation will get some media buzz around the globe. So we probably might even get much more attention than we got in the last few years and we might profit from that attention, too. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 11:59, Marcus Meissner <meissner@suse.de> wrote:

...

I am sure that a name change and the new build foundation will get some media buzz around the globe. So we probably might even get much more attention than we got in the last few years and we might profit from that attention, too.

But we will lose most of our (non community) users.

The "buzz" will be the same as with RandomNewDistro, one article and then gone in the wind.

The brand is the most important part on keeping the distribution alive. Throwing it away means throwing the distribution away, sorry.

that's a rather pessimistic view. If we do decide to change the Project's name, I'd expect we'd continue using the openSUSE brand for the distributions for at least a transitional period of a few years, which should give us the benefit of both attracting attention through the new name AND not alienating our existing users and contributors. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org