On 03/06/2019 18:03, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

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.

I'm also going to keep it short and agree with everything Ancor said here

...

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'll add a little to this in that since the "Leap" + "Tumbleweed" + "openSUSE" came about the openSUSE brand has finally started to gain a much broader traction across area's of the world where it previously hasn't been strong (Australia being one example) it would be a shame to throw all that away now by changing names just as we are becoming better known.

Beyond the obvious ties to SUSE I really like the use of "open" in our name, open has become such a fundamental part of our community its not just that we are open source, everything we do is open, we are open to anyone doing anything even proposing changing names etc :-).

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.

One of the interesting things is SUSE has already modernized there's to some extent (by changing to a color designers can work with)

Dne pondělí 3. června 2019 10:33:12 CEST, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa napsal(a):

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

...

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.

I fully agree here.

On 03/06/2019 10.35, Richard Brown wrote:

...

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 hate to change the name, but I do see your points and thus agree to the change. With some grief or sorrow.

Maybe if we could use both for "ever"... (for some value of "ever" ;-))

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.

As it has been said already, SUSE is an old company with a good reputation and a long history. This also reflects what openSUSE is and in the field openSUSE is known for it's professional attitude especially because it is based on hard tested commercial server software.

I feel my self as a chameleon, and I "identify" as green linux user, done that since my first SUSE 5.3. Renaming away from SUSE would destroy a lot of things.

my two cents, Cheers, Bernd

Am Mo., 3. Juni 2019 um 11:25 Uhr schrieb Per Jessen per@computer.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 03/06/2019 19:15, Richard Brown wrote:

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. Maybe we should wait and here what if any restrictions these will be, so

far in our discussions the board has not been made aware of anything

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.

This has not been a major issue in the last year, and even so we will still have just the same issues with the new name plus maybe more as we may not be as able to depend on SUSE's legal team to defend any issues like they currently do with openSUSE on numerous occasions.

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 6:43 PM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

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

The initial email mentioned Viridian, after the viridian green (derived from latin for green too). Overall I do believe if any change, it should be in the direction of green/chameleon association and not direction of Boaty McBoatface ;)

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

On wto, Jun 4, 2019 at 10:38 AM, Vojtěch Zeisek vojtech.zeisek@opensuse.org wrote:

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?

...

Correct, although with board having power over the trademark, there wouldn't be any need to discuss those matters with another body entirely, which makes the process more efficient. As it is currently, the board has to discuss trademark issues with SUSE before allowing or disallowing usage of the trademark by the third party, and as written, the time of the board is limited as well, they have their lifes, not to mention that SUSE operates only within business hours ;)

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

Hi Stasiek,

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

Cheers, Bernd

Am Mo., 3. Juni 2019 um 12:34 Uhr schrieb Stasiek Michalski hellcp@opensuse.org:

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

Hi again,

I've just looked the rules up for this (at least for the german language) and I've learned now that custom names indeed keep their custom writing! openSUSE it is!

Bernd

Am Mo., 3. Juni 2019 um 12:43 Uhr schrieb Stasiek Michalski hellcp@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

Also it is kind of is our own GNU/Linux thing, right? ;-)

Besides that I still would be happy with a name change. The move from SUSE Linux to openSUSE Linux was fine, many projects did it like that. Also it would be a tremendous effort. Shouldn't we use the spare resources in a better way?

Bernd

Am Mo., 3. Juni 2019 um 12:51 Uhr schrieb Simon Lees sflees@suse.de:

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

On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 9:15 PM, Ish Sookun ish.sookun@lasentinelle.mu wrote:

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.

Between this and SUSE getting their own colour wrong, and using a shade that is way too similar to openSUSE Green for any branding to be able to work, it's draining to see how much this still happens. I have been pointing this kind of stuff out for as long as I have been contributing to openSUSE and I doubt I will have a chance to take a break anytime soon by the looks of it.

I know it might be rare, but I really care about branding of openSUSE and subprojects, so they are marketable to any degree. This is certainly NOT how we get there.

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

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.

Regards, vinz.

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 9:01 AM Stasiek Michalski hellcp@opensuse.org wrote:

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.

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

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

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 9:01 AM Stasiek Michalski hellcp@opensuse.org wrote:

...

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.

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.

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 hellcp@opensuse.org

wrote:

...

...

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.

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

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

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 .

BC

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.")

Being around for 25 years now one would expect them to know openSUSE. And yet they make the mistake themselves - in the very same article! Having a logo image with correct spelling right beside the text!! => https://i.imgur.com/oAogMfH.png

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.

Regards, vinz.

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?

Regards, vinz.

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. ;-)

Regards, vinz.

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

should

Subjunctive. There you go. ;)

Regards, vinz.

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.

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 ;-)

How about this: we just don't make a big fuzz about it and go on with more important things?

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

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.

On Thu 2019-10-24, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

Nobody should need to care, why we have a name that causes us this amount of branding trouble is a mystery to me though.

That would be an easier and stronger argument if we could turn back time (paraphrasing Cher).

Given where we are today, I'll argue that losing an established brand emotionally, practically (think search engines, shirts, and loads of other aspects), and recognition-wise is not an evidently clear win.

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.

Gerald

Le 24/10/2019 à 16:43, Gerald Pfeifer a écrit :

On Thu 2019-10-24, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

...

Nobody should need to care, why we have a name that causes us this amount of branding trouble is a mystery to me though.

Given where we are today, I'll argue that losing an established brand emotionally,

as only of openSUSE capitalization, why not let people write it like they want? Only take care of our own communication. Same for any other name we could have

who care to rename VI?

jdd

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Thursday, 2019-10-24 at 16:10 +0200, Peter Czanik wrote:

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 :)

I love that mixed capitalization, and I'm sad to see it go.

- -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)

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?

And to extend that: If even we don't care for the correctly written name of our project, who else will?

How about this: we just don't make a big fuzz about it and go on with more important things?

I won't keep you back from that. ;-)

Regards, vinz.

Am Freitag, 25. Oktober 2019, 09:50:12 CEST schrieb Stephan Kulow:

So the fix is: don't read Heise articles

Well, that's quite a big hammer to some small nail. Though it sometimes might be worth a thought... :)

Regards, vinz.

On 17/10/2019 11.47, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

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.

It's fixed now.

(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.)

Thinkable for sure ;) Yes, that would work for me and make life indeed easier. But openSUSE has enough quirks already, so OpenSUSE will only help in a few cases,

Andreas

* Vinzenz Vietzke vinz@vinzv.de [06-03-19 10:12]:

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".

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

On 6/3/19 4:21 PM, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:

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.

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?

I don't think so.

Greetings, Stephan

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

Cheers

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.

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.

Op maandag 3 juni 2019 13:20:44 CEST schreef 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.

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 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.

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.

Regards, vinz.

Am Montag, 3. Juni 2019, 23:56:43 CEST schrieb Simon Lees:

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.

what he says.

cheers MH

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

...

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.

:) I'm sympathetic & respectful to your point of view, and will certainly back it with my full energies if the eventual vote shows it as the majority view.

But, I do feel compelled to point out that both options, renaming or sticking with "openSUSE" have significant costs.

For example, right now openSUSE has granted the right to use our trademark to various merchandise suppliers, sticker producers, hardware OEMs (eg. Tuxedo Computers who sell openSUSE laptops), and of course various regional groups of the openSUSE Project.

If the Project keeps its name as "openSUSE", then I would expect additional terms and conditions on the openSUSE Trademarks to be imposed as a result of the creation of the Foundation. These terms and conditions will likely limit/risk the projects ability to grant similar permissions in the future and possibly put those existing arrangements at risk.

The consequences of such a course of events could dramatically limit openSUSE's ability to market itself compared to our current arrangements - and Marketing is an area which I think everyone would say we should be expanding upon, not limiting ourselves.

I dont want to be a doomsayer, this dark future I paint is admittedly a worst case, but it's a worst case backed and imposed by the nature of international trademark law. I'm confident that both SUSE & openSUSE will want to do all that we can to mitigate those negative aspects of any decision. But figuring that out, discussing with lawyers, researching laws, drafting policies, getting those policies approved by the companies & communities involved, will ALSO be a huge amount of work.

Unlike the consequences of renaming which can be spread around, it's work which will likely be highly concentrated on the shoulders of a few volunteers, who's wellbeing and enthusiasm I will be greatly concerned about if we find ourselves going down that road.

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

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 ;)

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.

regards,

Klaas

On Tuesday, 4 June 2019 19:11:54 CEST Thorsten Bro | openSUSE Heroes wrote:

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... +12-m,today+12-m,today+12-m&geo=,,,&q=%2Fm%2F02pxwz1,%2Fm%2F02996,Ubuntu,%2F m%2F079d8p&sni=3

Cheers,

Hi everyone!

I closely followed this topic and already posted on github and in the openSUSE Facebook group about my own opinion. I want to have that seen here, too, so that those of you not following the github discussion or the group on Facebook don't miss what I think about the topic.

I know it's a highly controversial topic and we shouldn't miss on the risks of a brand change. But we shouldn't miss on the chances coming with it either. So here is what I think:

Keeping the name openSUSE would be a legal issue because the logo and name include those of SUSE. This simply leads to copyright and trademark issues. A potential foundation - which is a very good idea to have btw - would in it's pure existence be dependent on SUSE granting the right to use the name and branding / trademarks etc.

So the best way I see is - if the openSUSE community really wants to be able to easily act like one on a legal basis - we will need to change the name and the branding.

But I don't think that this does us or the distro(s) any harm as well as I don't care about a name change at all. Sure, it is a risk and it would be sad to give up on a name we got used to. But 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 - I do use it because I think that we have one of the most advanced linux distros out there as well as one of the best communities.

So, we need to find a fitting name and brand that much like CentOS is unique but still is able to establish some healthy connection to our roots in SUSE. And I think that CentOS is an excellent example on how to have a unique branding that has nothing to do with the Red Hat roots, but still maintaining and establishing a good reputation for being a free and open Red Hat alternative delivering a stable and pleasant Red Hat Enterprise experience.

I am therefore convinced that we might benefit from a unique brand that maybe even isn't directly connected or referencing SUSE, green, a chameleon etc.

I even had an idea. How about naming the foundation "Leap Foundation". Leap is tied and connected to openSUSE and therefore to SUSE, but still unique and earned some good reputation for being an excellent enterprise class operating system. We might then think about a renaming of Tumbleweed. But to be honest I never liked the name anyways. My suggestion would be to call it "Leap Infinity" or "Leap infin8" or something alike.

Think about it. What ever happens to the naming though, I really love the idea of a backing foundation behind the openSUSE community.

Just my 2 cents.

Have a great day, all and kind regards Pierre

On 6/4/19 5:28 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

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

...

...

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.

:) I'm sympathetic & respectful to your point of view, and will certainly back it with my full energies if the eventual vote shows it as the majority view.

But, I do feel compelled to point out that both options, renaming or sticking with "openSUSE" have significant costs.

For example, right now openSUSE has granted the right to use our trademark to various merchandise suppliers, sticker producers, hardware OEMs (eg. Tuxedo Computers who sell openSUSE laptops), and of course various regional groups of the openSUSE Project.

If the Project keeps its name as "openSUSE", then I would expect additional terms and conditions on the openSUSE Trademarks to be imposed as a result of the creation of the Foundation. These terms and conditions will likely limit/risk the projects ability to grant similar permissions in the future and possibly put those existing arrangements at risk.

The consequences of such a course of events could dramatically limit openSUSE's ability to market itself compared to our current arrangements - and Marketing is an area which I think everyone would say we should be expanding upon, not limiting ourselves.

I dont want to be a doomsayer, this dark future I paint is admittedly a worst case, but it's a worst case backed and imposed by the nature of international trademark law. I'm confident that both SUSE & openSUSE will want to do all that we can to mitigate those negative aspects of any decision. But figuring that out, discussing with lawyers, researching laws, drafting policies, getting those policies approved by the companies & communities involved, will ALSO be a huge amount of work.

Unlike the consequences of renaming which can be spread around, it's work which will likely be highly concentrated on the shoulders of a few volunteers, who's wellbeing and enthusiasm I will be greatly concerned about if we find ourselves going down that road.

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

I agree either way there is a lot of work. I still would consider a complete re-branding effort to be more taxing than dealing with possibly handling additional clauses on the use of trademark issues.

Given that the trademark issue is being pushed very strongly I am getting the feeling that the foundation push is really more about control of the mark then being able to receive donations in a structured way that makes those that want to donate feel comfortable with where the donations are going.

Later, Robert

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 ;)

On 03/06/2019 13.53, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

• Richard Brown <> [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.

LibreOffice (for example) changes it automatically to OpenSUSE. No one has been able to convince upstream to change this behaviour.

Thunderbird says the above OpenSUSE is not correct, but does not offer openSUSE as the correct one, despite being in the dictionary in the correct form.

* 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.

or just continue to use faulty software and be wrong.

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 |                  +-------+    +---------+

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,

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Gesendet: Mittwoch, 05. Juni 2019 um 18:28 Uhr Von: "Xaver Hellauer" xaver@hellauer.bayern An: "opensuse-project@opensuse.org" opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] Project name and logo discussion

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 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 |
               +-------+    +---------+
  
  

That's a nice idea.

But our main goal "financial goal" is not really compatible with letting openSUSE away. That has the reason that we need new sponsors. Many companies want to sponsor us as "openSUSE" and nothing else. The problem is that they are not allowed to do that in our situation now. How should we receive such sponsoring offers again with such a change of the name? We have to wait many years again until receiving such offers. You can watch the difference of budget at open source events at different booths of Linux distributions.

...

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

-- 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 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.

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.

One likely sticky topic around the Foundation will be that of the Trademarks, a number of the reasons I've already mentioned in this thread..hence why I think the naming discussion is a good one to have now. 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.

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.

Later, Robert

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.

On wto, Jun 4, 2019 at 9:48 AM, Sarah Julia Kriesch ada.lovelace@gmx.de wrote:

...

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.

Gecko Linux is abandoned, and Chameleon Foundation is way too generic, something like Trioceros would work better, because it is directly associated with chameleons, while not being too generic, but certainly isn't perfect, too hard to type and remember.

Anyway, there is an issue for suggesting names: https://github.com/openSUSE/branding/issues/112 but please, don't suggest stuff that consists of OS, Linux etc; openSUSE does more than distro stuff :D

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

On Mon, 03 Jun 2019 10:35:03 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

Short answer: Yes, mostly for reasons you've described already.

But one area that adds to my agreement that it's time for a change: In our forums and social media spaces, we regularly are identified as "SUSE" and people ask questions about SLE that have nothing to do with the project. There's significant confusion for people who have purchased the enterprise products that they can ask for (and receive) help and information about SUSE Linux Enterprise on the openSUSE forums, the openSUSE Facebook page, and the openSUSE Facebook group. It's not a daily occurrence, but it's not an infrequent occurrence.

Changing the name to not include SUSE will make the delineation extremely clear. I've had people *argue* with me, as someone who admins the forums and manages the FB presence, about whether or not it's appropriate for them to ask SUSE Linux Enterprise questions in those venues when I've directed them to an official SUSE support (or sales) venue.

I'm nice about it, but if someone wants to ask for pricing information about SLE, the openSUSE social media venues are not the right place to be - and I point them to SUSE Sales. Often that leads to "why is nobody answering the SUSE sales chat? And why won't you just give me an answer?", which looks bad for everyone.

On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 10:35:03AM +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

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?

Absolutely no.

Ciao, Marcus

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).

Michal Kubecek

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

On 6/5/19 6:28 PM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

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.

Indeed, reading through the various emails and reasons for & against, I am having a mixed feeling here. I think it might also be too early for a vote and we should give members more time for discussion. On that note I am volunteering for the election setup on Helios for whenever it is happening :)

Regards,

Ish Sookun

On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 5:39 PM Jan Engelhardt jengelh@inai.de wrote:

On Monday 2019-06-03 10:35, Richard Brown wrote:

...

From my point of view, there a number of benefits of renaming the openSUSE Project [...] Trademarks are only enforceable if they're considered unique.

Pipe dream: Have the foundation own the trademark and sublicense it to SUSE Linux GmbH. Probably won't work, but at least the thought was expressed.

This is actually probably the only workable way to keep the openSUSE name. I mentioned this several levels upthread, though I forgot to cite examples in which this is done. As Stasiek and Richard know, I also mentioned this at oSC, though it was also outright dismissed then too.

An example in which this has been done recently is actually with the Ziff Davis name and trademark. The Ziff Davis name, for a brief time, was actually maintained by a brand entity and was licensed to Ziff Davis Media and Ziff Davis Enterprise, two different companies with two different sets of websites. The two companies had originally been one company, and they'd split in two. ZDE failed, and was sold, so the ZDE name is no longer in use, but this had been a system used before.

Another example in which this occurs is in American telecommunications, where the Cellular ONE brand and name is actually used by multiple companies that aren't related to each other other than licensing the brand. There are a few cellular service providers who do business with this brand name even though they hold no ancestry or relation to the company who owns the brand.

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

("its", please.)

.. I would not mind a name change. The real long-timers already incurred a name change, so to speak, from SUSE to openSUSE, and, in a limited sense, again from openSUSE to Leap. One need not agree with the board, but judging from the Oak-vs-Leap decision at the time, they seem quite mindful as to what they decide. It is the one place where I feel representative democracy works.

The project's focus is technical ("best platform for developers" or so I remember someone from, I think, a Czech member), so the hope is that the project will be judged by that and not so much by its name. (Think "What's in a name?" / "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet".)

The *SUSE distributions have, over time, grown some "misnormers" in specific areas, which lend itself to a potential new mascot (if such should be needed in the course of actions):

• the SUSE mascot "Geeko", a chameleon, oddly makes a reference with its name to quite a different suborder of reptilia: geckos.

• the isolinux/grub bootloader implementation on the openSUSE ISOs features the filename "kroete.dat", German for the class of frog/toad amphibia, so not even chameleon/gecko reptilia.

All I'd ask for is keeping some element, such as the chameleon, the gecko, the secret amphibic identity, or the letter "S", that'd be great; furthermore, a must-have is the primary colour "green" (in one of its many shades anyway).

[As for Stasiek's contrast concern, #000000 works better with #73ba25 than #ffffff does, says that contrast-ratio.com website ;-) ]

Man... SUSE's identity confusion goes deeper than I had thought!

It's funny that slightly tweaking from a chameleon to a gecko would actually add so much harmony to the brand...

-- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

On Mon, 10 Jun 2019 at 18:32, Ronan Chagas ronisbr@gmail.com wrote:

...

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

Consider the following with your proposal

- The main point of forming the Foundation is to ease fundraising, sponsorship, etc for the openSUSE Project. Having a Foundation under a name different than that of our primary output will hinder that problem - just like it does for "The Document Foundation" who have to compete for attention with other significant sponsors of Libreoffice despite the fact the TDF is _the_ primary community organisation behind Libreoffice. It seems to me that we should do everything we can to avoid the name of the Foundation being any different than the name of the rest of the Project.

- 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.

Both of the above points might be satisfactory to the community, but it should be realised that consequences of this decision will shape the nature and ability of the Foundation to operate once its established. I think we should do our best to avoid looking at this topic emotionally and instead choose which option is practically, on balance, best for the Project in the long term.

Despite my repeated point-making on this thread, I actually have no strong preference either way..but I do wish to ensure that the community makes an informed choice.

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".

;-)

Have a lot of fun...

On 6/11/19 8:24 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

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,

I think that should not be an expectation.

which will be no different if we have a "FOOFoundation is not openSUSE" discrepancy.

This is speculation.

IANAL but one should be able to imaging a charter for the "FOOFoundation" to be written such that any concern about wher ethe money goes is elliviated.

"The FOOFoundation exists for the sole purpose to support the activities of the openSUSE project ....."

And yes this too is speculation as IANL and I certainly have no insight into what goes on in those companies that might want to sponsor openSUSE but have an issue with giving the money to a Foundation of another name.

Later Robert

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.

Best regards, Ronan Arraes

Hello Geekos,

Am 13.06.2019 23:21 schrieb Stasiek Michalski:

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

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.

Have a lot of fun Christian Imhorst

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

Hi LCP,

Em 14 de jun de 2019, à(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?

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.

Again, my proposal was to name the Foundation with a name we could also use in a Linux distro if necessary. The openSUSE project, as you called, will be under this Foundation. Hence, after the Foundation creation, its trustees can approach SUSE to discuss trademarks problems. After that, the Foundation will have very good arguments to keep or change the project name. Is there any problems in this approach?

Regards, Ronan-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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.

And as I've had to play devils advocate and messenger repeatedly on this thread, I'm aware that people may be having difficulty interpreting my view on this topic.

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.

Regards,

Richard

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 at 08:05, Michal Kubecek mkubecek@suse.cz wrote:

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 17/06/2019 19:47, Pierre Böckmann wrote:

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

If you meet the criteria there is still time (see the other thread I just started)

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?

Best regards, Ronan Arraes

On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 at 19:41, Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com 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.

To put it nicer, SUSE currently builds all of their products based on the "Factory First" process which is publicly documented here as part of SUSEs OpenChain certification:

https://opensource.suse.com/suse-open-source-policy https://www.suse.com/c/news/suse-secures-openchain-certification-meeting-the...

Whatever we call the openSUSE Project and/or it's Foundation, I do not think this is liable to change, and in fact I think it's highly likely that the Foundations could codify some aspects of that relationship into it's charter. And (unlike the name/trademarks) I see no controversy in that - SUSE and openSUSE collectively deciding to formalise it's working relationship even while it may be diverging it's trademarks could be seen as a win-win to both organisations. Speculatively speaking of course..

Regards,

Rich

On 12/06/2019 17:32, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

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.

Yeah as someone who also gets to see both sides, it would cost SUSE significantly more in staffing then they currently sponsor openSUSE just to create there next major release. Due to the amount of development work that goes into the SLE base system + reviews etc from community contributors, then you get to the packaging side were for some of the packages i'm responsible for in SLE see far more submissions from community members I co maintain with then myself, so thats more work i'd have to do.

Then you get the fact that the stability of the next major SLE release is far better then it would be otherwise because it has been tested by a huge number of tumbleweed users and SLE 15-SP1 is a similar story with Leap 15.1. So quite simply at the moment there is no way that someone could write any sort of business case for SUSE to abandon openSUSE the benefits SUSE currently receives are far far more then the amount it invests. Unless this changes which I don't see happening there is practically no chance of SUSE leaving openSUSE.

On 6/11/19 4:23 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 10 Jun 2019 at 18:32, Ronan Chagas ronisbr@gmail.com wrote:

...

...

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

Consider the following with your proposal

• The main point of forming the Foundation is to ease fundraising,

sponsorship, etc for the openSUSE Project. Having a Foundation under a name different than that of our primary output will hinder that problem - just like it does for "The Document Foundation" who have to compete for attention with other significant sponsors of Libreoffice despite the fact the TDF is _the_ primary community organisation behind Libreoffice.

On the other hand the Linux Foundation is a very effective fundraiser for a plethora of projects that do not have "Linux" in the name. So there is anecdotal evidence for both sides of the coin.

It seems to me that we should do everything we can to avoid the name of the Foundation being any different than the name of the rest of the Project.

• 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.

This is speculation.

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 speculation.

But, while we are speculating. Would we expect SUSE to continue to sponsor the new Foundation/project if the new Foundation acts in a way that is not consistent with SUSE business interests?

Both of the above points might be satisfactory to the community, but it should be realised that consequences of this decision will shape the nature and ability of the Foundation to operate once its established. I think we should do our best to avoid looking at this topic emotionally and instead choose which option is practically, on balance, best for the Project in the long term.

Despite my repeated point-making on this thread, I actually have no strong preference either way..but I do wish to ensure that the community makes an informed choice.

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.

No confusion there. Maybe a period of "Chameleon Linux - formerly known as openSUSE" or something like that to bridge the names could be done.

Rebranding is tricky (don't get me wrong), but in my mind, this would be clearer than Fedora vs. RedHat, because with that, the original name for the community distribution continued to be used by the enterprise products.

Here, we already have confusion between "SUSE" and "openSUSE" - as I mentioned before, on various venues, I've had people respond very angrily when they've asked SLE questions in openSUSE venues and have been told they need to talk to SUSE and that the commercial products are not supported by the openSUSE community (nor are they sold by the community - seriously, I have people ask questions about SLE pricing on occasion who then get pissed off because the openSUSE project can't answer their question on Facebook).

The closeness of the names *creates* confusion as it is because people think that because openSUSE contains SUSE, the two are completely interchangeable from a support and business perspective.

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?

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.

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 2:07 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 ?

Normally, such a scenario requires both SUSE and openSUSE to give up ownership of their names to a third entity, which licenses the names to both of them. For something like that to work, the "SUSE" name and branding would need to be owned either by the foundation or another entity jointly owned by the foundation and the company. That entity would then provide strong licenses to the branding to both SUSE and openSUSE, usually some kind of irrevocable, permissive license or something.

That's probably the ideal scenario, but politically very difficult to implement, as it puts the trademarks (theoretically) out of the control of both SUSE and openSUSE. In practice, it probably would lead to some kind of joint administration of the trademarks at the foundation level or something of the sort.

On 04/06/2019 03:36, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher 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 ?

This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and so far no one within SUSE has told the board it would likely need to change if we had a foundation. Currently SUSE owns the trademark and allows the openSUSE board to approve where it is used.

On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 11:03 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

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?

To make it short: personally I'm in favour of the rebranding including the rename, already since watching the relates oSC streams, though I can see why others are hesitant about it for sentimental reasons and the amount of work required to pull through with it.

Now or never I guess...