On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, 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... 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? Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Stasiek Michalski píše v Po 03. 06. 2019 v 08:01 +0200:

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)

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:00, Marcel Kühlhorn 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? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:34, John Salvatore Fontanelli wrote:

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

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

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)

-- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, 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... 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 -- 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 6/3/19 6:00 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:53, Alberto Planas Dominguez wrote:

...

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

On 03/06/2019 19:15, Richard Brown wrote:

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:34, John Salvatore Fontanelli 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. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 11:53 AM, Alberto Planas Dominguez wrote:

...

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 10:47 AM, Tomas Chvatal wrote:

Stasiek Michalski píše v Po 03. 06. 2019 v 08:01 +0200:

...

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)

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

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).

You can count me in as a volunteer to take care of the vote there. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli 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

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 :

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli 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

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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 :

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

...

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 12:39 PM, John Salvatore Fontanelli 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

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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. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

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

...

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

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

+1

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:00, Marcel Kühlhorn wrote:

...

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

...

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

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

+1

A vote for something big like this really should happen

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

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

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

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

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... -- Marcel Kühlhorn Have a lot of fun!

On pon, Jun 3, 2019 at 1:59 PM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

...

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Vinzenz Vietzke [06-03-19 10:12]:

Am Mon, 03 Jun 2019 11:25:42 +0200 schrieb Per Jessen :

...

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. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mon, 3 Jun 2019 10:16:47 -0400 schrieb Patrick Shanahan :

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

...

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

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

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

Am Mon, 3 Jun 2019 16:34:16 +0200 schrieb Stephan Kulow :

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 15:55, Robert Schweikert 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 -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Distinguished Architect LINUX Technical Team Lead Public Cloud rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.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. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 2:07 PM 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 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. -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

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

...

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 15:55, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

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

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

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

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

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

Later, Robert

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

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

Hi,

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

...

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

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

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 13:53, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher wrote:

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 08:02, 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... Any change in regards to all things outlined here will be controversial and will have huge influence on the future of openSUSE as a whole. Take this very seriously, but also don't take it too seriously because it doesn't change the way community operates, but instead how it ends up being represented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talking speculatively, based on casual conversations and no legal advice (yet), my personal expectation is that if the Project decides to keep operating under the name "openSUSE", then there is no way the Project will ever own the Trademark around the Project. While I'm confident SUSE will do all it can to support openSUSE in this area, we will all likely be limited in what we can do in the areas of naming, trademarks, sub-projects, domains, etc, as a result.

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

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

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

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

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

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

Am 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 -- Mathias Homann Senior Systems Engineer, IT Consultant. IT Trainer Mathias.Homann@openSUSE.org http://www.tuxonline.tech gpg key fingerprint: 8029 2240 F4DD 7776 E7D2 C042 6B8E 029E 13F2 C102

On wto, Jun 4, 2019 at 9:48 AM, Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:

...

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

...

Hi,

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

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On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 15:55, Robert Schweikert wrote:

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So the underlying question, and with that back to my intro. Is

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...

...

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

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...

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

...

...

exactly when I'll be able to contribute much to that drafting effort.

Meanwhile though, thanks to the amazing work of the Video team,

...

...

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

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in what form.

Thanks for the link.

...

In a few short bulletpoints for those who cant be bothered to

watch

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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

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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

On 04/06/2019 02:09, Robert Schweikert wrote: there a things, promise there pursued and the trademark

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

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

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019 at 11:34, John Salvatore Fontanelli wrote:

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 11:05, Vojtěch Zeisek 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 ;) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 at 11:05, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi,

Here's just one little bit of food for thought. I was just chitchatting with a coworker about this, and he said: "If opensuse changes their name whey will be just one of many unknown / new linux distributions, while right now they are one of the market leaders" Do we really WANT to be "just some small new distro" instead one of the big five? Cheers MH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

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

...

Hi,

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

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

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

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

Cheers MH

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

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 11:59, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

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

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

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

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

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

On śro, Jun 5, 2019 at 12:45 PM, Mathias Homann wrote:

Am 2019-06-05 12:02, schrieb Richard Brown:

...

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 11:59, Marcus Meissner wrote:

...

...

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

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

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

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

that's a rather pessimistic view. If we do decide to change the Project's name, I'd expect we'd continue using the openSUSE brand for the distributions for at least a transitional period of a few years, which should give us the benefit of both attracting attention through the new name AND not alienating our existing users and contributors.

| sed -e 's/pessimistic/realistic/'

Am I really the only one on this list to realize that the four letters "SUSE" have been a household term for over 25 years now? And we want to throw that away WHY exactly?

do you think that ... lets say Volkswagen would change their name to ... "peoplevehicle" for some reason?

Absolutely, after the scandals with emissions their reputation is way below the mark, they are lucky to have bought majority of European industry and brands to keep them going ;) Joking aside, the choice comes down to: we are able to freely use brand as a community or we keep the recognized brand with strings attached. It's basically either being able to do marketing at reasonable levels or have already recognized branding. Now question is, will we be able to keep up the momentum going if we have a limited ability to promote our brand? LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 13:38 Pierre Böckmann wrote:

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 12:45:43 CEST Mathias Homann wrote:

...

do you think that ... lets say Volkswagen would change their name to ... "peoplevehicle" for some reason?

And anyways, if they'd decide to do so because they think it sounds better and is more internationally understood, don't you think that they'd still be seen as VW and linked to their history and tradition

I definitely don't. We may consider it irrational but in general public perception, the continuity and tradition would suffere a lot. Changing the name (and I don't mean cosmetic changes like dropping the dots or capitalizing the "u") is a big step and it means quite substantial disassociation from the history. In general, only companies with weak brands and/or companies which believe cutting themselves from the history would actually help them rename themselves.

and that people would still continue to buy their cars?!

Hard to say. For a lot of people, a brand with tradition means a lot. So I don't expect Ford, Peugeot or Volkswagen going through a rename unless they were in deep and serious trouble. Even "Dieselgate" you mentioned wasn't enough for VW to want them to risk the image of continuity. And, to be honest, I don't really expect Boeing to do that either. Michal Kubecek -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 14:19, Robert Schweikert wrote:

But again it all comes back to my earlier question why do we pursue this avenue? Initially the answer was, paraphrasing, ability to better handle financial transactions and attract sponsors. As the discussion moves on it appears to me that the real reason is control of trademarks and more independence. If the later is really the underlying reason, then yes a name change would be the pill we have to swallow. But if we primarily care about being able to properly handle financial transactions then a name change is not needed and I am certain there are reasonable ways to deal with the trademark topics that come up.

Please do us all a favour and kill the conspiracy theory talk :) The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period. The name of the Project, the name of the Foundation, are supplementary discussions that spawn from that, and the Trademark issues are not things to be ignored or brushed over lightly. The harsh realities of trademark law will shape and impact what the Project will be able to do as a Foundation. There's no ulterior motive in bringing this up for discussion now, but if we don't discuss it now, it will be too late to consider those implications once we've started signing contracts and forming legal entities. if we keep the name, we'll have the challenges of figuring out how to operate a legal entity without absolute control of our trademark. There are no easy answers on that route, but the challenges are not impossible. If we change the name, we'll have the challenges of rebranding. There are no easy answers on that route either, but the challenges are also not impossible. So, I think you can stop going back to your earlier question instead look forward. The only question for the Project is which is our preference? Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On śro, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:18 PM, Robert Schweikert wrote:

On 6/5/19 5:45 AM, Pierre Böckmann wrote:

...

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

...

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

...

Hi,

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

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

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

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

Cheers MH

Hi Mathias,

I don't think that we are becoming "just some small new distro". The Community stays the same, only with a strong supporting foundation behind it. Neither are we cutting the ties to SUSE, nor do we rebase the distro on any other technological basis. Leap will continue to be Leap, and same applies to Tumbleweed and the openSUSE project.

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

Sorry but that is all speculation, we might get media attention we might ..... and flies in the face of historical evidence

Mandrake -> Mandriva -> what is it now? Does anyone care?

This is actually a very powerful example, Mandrake had to change the name, because of copyright issues, to Mandriva which went under a few years later, without any agreements with community to continue using the name in case this happens. Then Mageia and a few other projects formed out of this. This exact thing is why we need to discuss if we want this to repeat if SUSE goes under. I'm not saying it will, but all of the discussion is based on the history of other open source corporations. :P 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, Am 05.06.19 um 14:32 schrieb Michal Kubecek:

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

...

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

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 14:36:19 CEST Stasiek Michalski wrote:

On śro, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:18 PM, Robert Schweikert

wrote:

...

On 6/5/19 5:45 AM, Pierre Böckmann wrote:

...

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

...

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

...

Hi,

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

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

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

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

Cheers MH

Hi Mathias,

I don't think that we are becoming "just some small new distro". The Community stays the same, only with a strong supporting foundation behind it. Neither are we cutting the ties to SUSE, nor do we rebase the distro on any other technological basis. Leap will continue to be Leap, and same applies to Tumbleweed and the openSUSE project.

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

Sorry but that is all speculation, we might get media attention we might ..... and flies in the face of historical evidence

Mandrake -> Mandriva -> what is it now? Does anyone care?

This is actually a very powerful example, Mandrake had to change the name, because of copyright issues, to Mandriva which went under a few years later, without any agreements with community to continue using the name in case this happens. Then Mageia and a few other projects formed out of this. This exact thing is why we need to discuss if we want this to repeat if SUSE goes under.

I'm not saying it will, but all of the discussion is based on the history of other open source corporations. :P

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

That's exactly the point and why I wrote: " 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." And I would rather prefer not to be dependent on SUSE, their willingness to grant us the right to use their name, brand and logo and their ability to stay a healthy company. I am sure they will, and most likely they will always stay supportive and willing to grant us the necessary rights. But that are no less "mights" and "coulds" than those mentioned before. There is still a realistic possibility that for instance some corporation acquires SUSE and decides that SUSE has to save money and stop supporting the openSUSE project or the new owners decide that they don't want to continue to share copyrights and trademarks with the community and the openSUSE project and there are so many other scenarios possible which are problematic. I believe that we can master the challenges of re-branding and even benefit from it. We can and will continue to cooperate with SUSE but we gain independence and empowering the community for the time being. Additionally I don't think that our situation is comparable with Mandrake / Mandriva / Mageia. We have the chance to make the transition as smooth as possible because we are not forced to change name. But some day we might be if we don't go this way with will of our own. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 15:03:59 CEST Robert Schweikert wrote:

On 6/5/19 8:29 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 14:19, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

But again it all comes back to my earlier question why do we pursue this avenue? Initially the answer was, paraphrasing, ability to better handle financial transactions and attract sponsors. As the discussion moves on it appears to me that the real reason is control of trademarks and more independence. If the later is really the underlying reason, then yes a name change would be the pill we have to swallow. But if we primarily care about being able to properly handle financial transactions then a name change is not needed and I am certain there are reasonable ways to deal with the trademark topics that come up.

Please do us all a favour and kill the conspiracy theory talk :)

How is describing what I am observing conspiracy theory?

The talk at the openSUSE conference was focused on financial transactions as the reasoning for the foundation and probably more than 60% of messages, or more, in this thread focus around issues w.r.t. trademark and control thereof.

...

The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period.

Well if that is the case then maybe you should make equally offensive accusation against those that are focusing and speculating about trademark restrictions and focus the discussion on legal issues when we have no statements from SUSE about if there would be any additional restrictions on the use of the mark or not.

...

The name of the Project, the name of the Foundation, are supplementary discussions that spawn from that, and the Trademark issues are not things to be ignored or brushed over lightly. The harsh realities of trademark law will shape and impact what the Project will be able to do as a Foundation.

Fair, then go get the facts from SUSE and stop the speculation, that's part of your job isn't it.

...

There's no ulterior motive in bringing this up for discussion now, but if we don't discuss it now, it will be too late to consider those implications once we've started signing contracts and forming legal entities.

if we keep the name, we'll have the challenges of figuring out how to operate a legal entity without absolute control of our trademark.

True, but that is not a stated goal of the foundation, you just said that yourself above. So maybe a bit consistency would be helpful.

If control of the mark is important then that should be stated as a goal of the foundation. Which then pretty much ends the discussion as we all agree that in order to control the mark a re-name is necessary.

...

There are no easy answers on that route, but the challenges are not impossible.

Actually the answers are fairly obvious if we'd choose to properly formulate the goals of the change.

- Financial only -> keep what we have

- Financial and control the mark -> rename

...

If we change the name, we'll have the challenges of rebranding. There are no easy answers on that route either, but the challenges are also not impossible.

So, I think you can stop going back to your earlier question instead look forward. The only question for the Project is which is our preference?

How can you ask the preference when the goals are not clearly formulated?

If we want control of the mark, which is what many in the thread appear to be advocating, there is only one choice. What's missing here is a clear statement whether or not control of the mark is part of the driving factor of the foundation.

Later, Robert

Controlling the brand and trademark and owning the copyright for the name isn't the main factor. The main factor is: Do we want the risks that I described which are a direct consequence of using openSUSE as a name for the foundation. If we want we can continue to call all projects openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Tumbleweed and so on until maybe some day we are not allowed to further use the brand. That's a possibility here. So the question isn't alone what goals there are for the foundation but under which conditions we want that foundation to operate, too. Just saying... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 15:34:53 CEST John Salvatore Fontanelli wrote:

The naming discussion should also consider: do we want to be seen close to SUSE? If so, we should should avoid any name change at all.

It should consider that, too, sure, but even if, I wouldn't generally decline a name change (or better said: a different name for the foundation and continually rebranding the project). I mean, let me explain in different words: You don't need to marry your girlfriend to be her boyfriend/man, do you? To be close to her you don't need to share a lastname or move into your girlfriend's apartment. Same is true for us as a community. We don't need to have a SUSE in our name to be close to SUSE, just like Fedora has neither "Red" nor "Hat" in it's name - although I know that fedora is a hat which might even be red... well, yeah. But you get my point, I guess. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 15:04, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

The name of the Project, the name of the Foundation, are supplementary discussions that spawn from that, and the Trademark issues are not things to be ignored or brushed over lightly. The harsh realities of trademark law will shape and impact what the Project will be able to do as a Foundation.

Fair, then go get the facts from SUSE and stop the speculation, that's part of your job isn't it.

and I've got 'the facts from SUSE' - you and most of the people on this list know me, and my default setting of community first. It should be obvious to anyone who knows me at all that my advocacy for addressing this issue, and all the issues I raise, are entirely informed by information I've received as part of my job. The only reason I qualify all of my remarks with words like "should", "possibly" and other qualifiers is because we have strong commitments from SUSE that they will do everything they can to help openSUSE regardless of it's decisions. So we have the luxury of this discussion not being under undue pressure from our corporate sponsor. And thusly, we can all discuss this frankly as community members with my 'communication of SUSE's interests' being part of my regular, relaxed way of conducting myself in the community. But please don't mistake that casual nature as neglecting my responsibilities. And even if you do, please refrain from publicly questioning my commitment to my work duties in the future. Not only do I find that behaviour unprofessional, but it sure makes it harder to do my job.

...

There's no ulterior motive in bringing this up for discussion now, but if we don't discuss it now, it will be too late to consider those implications once we've started signing contracts and forming legal entities.

if we keep the name, we'll have the challenges of figuring out how to operate a legal entity without absolute control of our trademark.

True, but that is not a stated goal of the foundation, you just said that yourself above. So maybe a bit consistency would be helpful.

If control of the mark is important then that should be stated as a goal of the foundation. Which then pretty much ends the discussion as we all agree that in order to control the mark a re-name is necessary.

It's not a stated goal. Because it isn't a goal. But, its an environmental reality, trademarks are a thing, openSUSE has one, and we need to figure out how we're going to handle it. Having a trademark & product name separate from the primary legal entity is possible - see The Document Foundation and Libreoffice But, at the same time, such an arrangement can be seen to be highly problematic - with other prominent sponsors of Libreoffice including corporate entities like Collabora, the TDF/Libreoffice/Collabora relationship is a complex one which generates tensions from time to time. "Who is in charge of Libreoffice?" can be an awkward question, which can lead to complex situations when it comes to the very sponsorship and contract signing goals we seek to solve with our Foundation. With SUSE continuing to be a close sponsor of openSUSE, we run risks of similar complexity. I'd personally prefer that openSUSE avoids such a complex arrangement. I'm a strong advocate that the Foundation should be the primary legal representation of the Project, and should share the name with the Project. "Who is in charge of openSUSE?" should be easily answered with "The openSUSE community, represented legally by the openSUSE Foundation". Anything else just hinders the ability of the Foundation to be able to do it's business and to be broadly seen as the authoritative entity behind this community. And while many of the points I have risen in this thread suggest such clarity will be easier to achieve with a name other than openSUSE, I'm not suggesting that it is the only way forward. As I've stated repeatedly, I do believe we might be able to come up with a satisfactory arrangement with the current name and Trademark. But it _will_ be a heck of a large amount of work, for at least, the Board, SUSE, myself and probably a good chunk of other people too. So if we go down that road, those people are going to need to be absolutely sure it's what the community want, and that the collective decision was a well informed one. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 6/5/19 9:26 AM, Pierre Böckmann wrote:

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 15:03:59 CEST Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

On 6/5/19 8:29 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 14:19, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

But again it all comes back to my earlier question why do we pursue this avenue? Initially the answer was, paraphrasing, ability to better handle financial transactions and attract sponsors. As the discussion moves on it appears to me that the real reason is control of trademarks and more independence. If the later is really the underlying reason, then yes a name change would be the pill we have to swallow. But if we primarily care about being able to properly handle financial transactions then a name change is not needed and I am certain there are reasonable ways to deal with the trademark topics that come up.

Please do us all a favour and kill the conspiracy theory talk :)

How is describing what I am observing conspiracy theory?

The talk at the openSUSE conference was focused on financial transactions as the reasoning for the foundation and probably more than 60% of messages, or more, in this thread focus around issues w.r.t. trademark and control thereof.

...

The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period.

Well if that is the case then maybe you should make equally offensive accusation against those that are focusing and speculating about trademark restrictions and focus the discussion on legal issues when we have no statements from SUSE about if there would be any additional restrictions on the use of the mark or not.

...

The name of the Project, the name of the Foundation, are supplementary discussions that spawn from that, and the Trademark issues are not things to be ignored or brushed over lightly. The harsh realities of trademark law will shape and impact what the Project will be able to do as a Foundation.

Fair, then go get the facts from SUSE and stop the speculation, that's part of your job isn't it.

...

There's no ulterior motive in bringing this up for discussion now, but if we don't discuss it now, it will be too late to consider those implications once we've started signing contracts and forming legal entities.

if we keep the name, we'll have the challenges of figuring out how to operate a legal entity without absolute control of our trademark.

True, but that is not a stated goal of the foundation, you just said that yourself above. So maybe a bit consistency would be helpful.

If control of the mark is important then that should be stated as a goal of the foundation. Which then pretty much ends the discussion as we all agree that in order to control the mark a re-name is necessary.

...

There are no easy answers on that route, but the challenges are not impossible.

Actually the answers are fairly obvious if we'd choose to properly formulate the goals of the change.

- Financial only -> keep what we have

- Financial and control the mark -> rename

...

If we change the name, we'll have the challenges of rebranding. There are no easy answers on that route either, but the challenges are also not impossible.

So, I think you can stop going back to your earlier question instead look forward. The only question for the Project is which is our preference?

How can you ask the preference when the goals are not clearly formulated?

If we want control of the mark, which is what many in the thread appear to be advocating, there is only one choice. What's missing here is a clear statement whether or not control of the mark is part of the driving factor of the foundation.

Later, Robert

Controlling the brand and trademark and owning the copyright for the name isn't the main factor. The main factor is: Do we want the risks that I described which are a direct consequence of using openSUSE as a name for the foundation.

And your statement is not consistent with statements made in the open Board meeting at Osc and not consistent with what was stated by Richard, let me repeat: """ The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period. """ I am not implying that related topics should be ignored, but we should give them proper weight. The discussion in this thread mostly focuses around control of the mark and why that may or more may not be important. Based on that it appears to me that the first question we need to answer for ourselves is if it is important to control the mark, and how important it is? And that is being discussed with arguments on either side of the topic. The rest follows from there. The original question, paraphrased, "change the name or not?" becomes superfluous once we agree, possibly vote on, whether complete control of the mark is something that we want or not. But again it all flows from the answer to the question, what is the driving factor, or more broadly formulated, what are the driving factors? And then the follow on question, what is the relative importance of the various factors. Based on the discussion it would appear that topics around the mark are more important than handling the finances. Otherwise one would think we'd talk about how it would work to open accounts, where they would be located, if there would be membership dues, if we get hardware where that would be located etc. Basically things around financial and sponsorship topics. None of those topics are going to be straight forward. Yet the majority of the messages are around the mark. And here is the crux, two different answers to the same question. One person proclaiming the main factor is financial and another proclaiming that risks associated with not owning the mark are the driving factors. And yes certainly we can in some way construct a way in which owning the mark is connected to money.

If we want we can continue to call all projects openSUSE Leap, openSUSE Tumbleweed and so on until maybe some day we are not allowed to further use the brand. That's a possibility here.

So the question isn't alone what goals there are for the foundation but under which conditions we want that foundation to operate, too.

The conditions are determined by the choices we make. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Distinguished Architect LINUX Technical Team Lead Public Cloud rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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

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

...

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

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

Regards,

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

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

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 16:11:57 CEST Robert Schweikert wrote:

And your statement is not consistent with statements made in the open Board meeting at Osc and not consistent with what was stated by Richard, let me repeat:

""" The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period. """

I am not implying that related topics should be ignored, but we should give them proper weight.

We definitely should. What weight is the right weight for each of them nonetheless needs discussion again and has nothing to do with inconsistent statements.

The discussion in this thread mostly focuses around control of the mark and why that may or more may not be important.

Based on that it appears to me that the first question we need to answer for ourselves is if it is important to control the mark, and how important it is?

Is that a question or a statement? I can only speak for myself, but that is not the main question and has never been. But it is a question that needs an answer and I'd say: Yes, we should control the brand and trademark and be the copyright owners of our own community's and foundation's name because otherwise we'd be dependent on others.

And that is being discussed with arguments on either side of the topic.

The rest follows from there. The original question, paraphrased, "change the name or not?" becomes superfluous once we agree, possibly vote on, whether complete control of the mark is something that we want or not.

But again it all flows from the answer to the question, what is the driving factor, or more broadly formulated, what are the driving factors? And then the follow on question, what is the relative importance of the various factors.

Based on the discussion it would appear that topics around the mark are more important than handling the finances. Otherwise one would think we'd talk about how it would work to open accounts, where they would be located, if there would be membership dues, if we get hardware where that would be located etc. Basically things around financial and sponsorship topics. None of those topics are going to be straight forward. Yet the majority of the messages are around the mark.

And here is the crux, two different answers to the same question. One person proclaiming the main factor is financial and another proclaiming that risks associated with not owning the mark are the driving factors.

I can only find one main driving factor. But that doesn't limit our discussion to only that one driving factor. There is more to consider than that. Otherwise it'd render the whole discussion useless, because those side effects are what we need to discuss.

And yes certainly we can in some way construct a way in which owning the mark is connected to money.

You don't need to construct a link that's already there.

The conditions are determined by the choices we make.

That's another no-brainer and only logical. So, yes, exactly that's why we are discussion the influence of all thinkable choices on the conditions under which a foundation would have to operate. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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, Ish Sookun N�����r��y隊Z)z{.��k�7��맲��r��z�^�ˬz��N�(�֜��^� ޭ隊Z)z{.��k�7���0�����Ǩ�

Hi, On 6/5/19 10:23 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 16:12, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

And your statement is not consistent with statements made in the open Board meeting at Osc and not consistent with what was stated by Richard, let me repeat:

""" The primary motivator for the Foundation is to better handle financial transactions and to attract sponsors - period. """

I am not implying that related topics should be ignored, but we should give them proper weight.

The discussion in this thread mostly focuses around control of the mark and why that may or more may not be important.

Based on that it appears to me that the first question we need to answer for ourselves is if it is important to control the mark, and how important it is?

And that is being discussed with arguments on either side of the topic.

The rest follows from there. The original question, paraphrased, "change the name or not?" becomes superfluous once we agree, possibly vote on, whether complete control of the mark is something that we want or not.

But again it all flows from the answer to the question, what is the driving factor, or more broadly formulated, what are the driving factors? And then the follow on question, what is the relative importance of the various factors.

Based on the discussion it would appear that topics around the mark are more important than handling the finances. Otherwise one would think we'd talk about how it would work to open accounts, where they would be located, if there would be membership dues, if we get hardware where that would be located etc. Basically things around financial and sponsorship topics. None of those topics are going to be straight forward. Yet the majority of the messages are around the mark.

And here is the crux, two different answers to the same question. One person proclaiming the main factor is financial and another proclaiming that risks associated with not owning the mark are the driving factors.

And yes certainly we can in some way construct a way in which owning the mark is connected to money.

This thread isn't the "lets sort out all the topics around the Foundation" thread.

The Board have made their decision regarding the Foundation, it's going to happen, and sure, you list above a whole bunch of subsequent decisions that need to be discussed and then made.

This thread is titled "Project name and logo discussion" and was started by Stasiek to discuss one of those related topics. It's one close to his heart, as the most active contributor to all of our branding across the Project. I respect that, and it makes sense to me that this is one of the hotter topics to some members in our community even if it was 'out of scope' of the Boards motivation for deciding to go towards a Foundation.

Therefore, all of my replies on this thread have kept to the topic of the thread. When discussing this in the context of the Foundation, sure I've heavily focused only the aspects of the Foundation discussion that are relevant to this threads topic of "Name and Logo" - the Trademark..because, well, I think it should be obvious, the Trademark is the primary, if not only, part of the Foundation discussion that is remotely relevant to the topic of this thread.

There is only a crux, conflict, or confusion if you conflate the topic of this thread with all the other aspects of the Foundation discussion we're going to need to discuss eventually.

But I'd say it would be hell of a lot better for everyone if we actually kept this thread on topic and just addressed the Name/Logo topic here and now.

And how can one form an opinion about that if one does not know if collectively we think that control of the mark is important or not? We need to answer the underlying question.... Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Distinguished Architect LINUX Technical Team Lead Public Cloud rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 6/5/19 6:56 AM, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

Dne středa 5. června 2019 15:34:53 CEST, John Salvatore Fontanelli napsal(a):

...

The naming discussion should also consider: do we want to be seen close to SUSE? If so, we should should avoid any name change at all.

IMHO being in very close relationship with innovative technological company is huge benefit of openSUSE. Isn't openSUSE upstream of SLE? I'd keep this link as visible as possible.

I've been in the openSUSE exhibit space at LinuxFest NW (Bellingham, WA, US/original grassroots fest/20 years) several times. The most common question by far is: "What is different about openSUSE?" Answers vary depending on the particulars of the questioner and the boothperson addressing the question. However my sense is the answer that satisfies most people involves speaking about the relationship between Tumbleweed, Leap, and the rest of SUSE (not just SLE). This explanation has hidden, subjective weight far beyond just the name. In my view, the visible, obvious relationship between openSUSE and SUSE is highly valuable. It would be a mistake to change the name. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am Mittwoch, 5. Juni 2019, 18:24:07 CEST schrieb Robert Schweikert: <snip>

...

There is only a crux, conflict, or confusion if you conflate the topic of this thread with all the other aspects of the Foundation discussion we're going to need to discuss eventually.

But I'd say it would be hell of a lot better for everyone if we actually kept this thread on topic and just addressed the Name/Logo topic here and now.

And how can one form an opinion about that if one does not know if collectively we think that control of the mark is important or not?

We need to answer the underlying question....

...and probably we need to ask 'Why and under what circumstances should one change a brand name?' I talked to a marketing and communications expert this evening. He is CEO of a communications agency in Germany. There are two reasons why you should change a brand: 1) the brand is damaged, e.g a company that went bankrupt and tries a restart (Example: Schlecker, a retail chain in Germany, would have been such an example). Or you are associated with bad practice or problematic goods (Monsanto maybe?) In this case it makes clearly sense to change the brand to get a 'clean reputation' before going back into the market. Is the brand perception of openSUSE damaged? Clearly not. SUSE is the oldest Linux distro alive, and has a very good reputation esp. among professional users. Newbies may tend to Ub***u, but we can work on this. In general, openSUSE perception is positive as well. 2) for legal reasons of whatever kind. Here we are back in the discussion about the trademark 'openSUSE'. And this is something that needs to be solved and discussed with SUSE. Ideally SUSE grants openSUSE (Foundation, I assume) the unlimited and non-revocable right to use the brand 'openSUSE' under the terms and conditions of the foundation charter. In this ideal case there is no legal issue. Assuming that SUSE still wants to keep the relationship I see a good chance that this right is given to the foundation. Board has to discuss terms and conditions with SUSE legal counselor, and report this back to the community. Only in case there is a real issue we should consider a name change. Under no circumstance - never ever - we should change the brand without a need (in german: in vorauseilendem Gehorsam), as this has no benefit to the brand. We would need to put some effort in a new CI/CD, and a massive investment in communication, under the risk that we end up as 'just another Linux distro'. So, lets clarify terms and conditions for trademark usage, and then see if there is a need to change names. For the moment I would not continue this discussion, for the above reasons. Cheers Axel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 21:33:08 CEST Axel Braun wrote:

Am Mittwoch, 5. Juni 2019, 18:24:07 CEST schrieb Robert Schweikert:

<snip>

...

...

There is only a crux, conflict, or confusion if you conflate the topic of this thread with all the other aspects of the Foundation discussion we're going to need to discuss eventually.

But I'd say it would be hell of a lot better for everyone if we actually kept this thread on topic and just addressed the Name/Logo topic here and now.

And how can one form an opinion about that if one does not know if collectively we think that control of the mark is important or not?

We need to answer the underlying question....

...and probably we need to ask 'Why and under what circumstances should one change a brand name?'

I talked to a marketing and communications expert this evening. He is CEO of a communications agency in Germany.

There are two reasons why you should change a brand:

1) the brand is damaged, e.g a company that went bankrupt and tries a restart (Example: Schlecker, a retail chain in Germany, would have been such an example). Or you are associated with bad practice or problematic goods (Monsanto maybe?) In this case it makes clearly sense to change the brand to get a 'clean reputation' before going back into the market.

Is the brand perception of openSUSE damaged? Clearly not. SUSE is the oldest Linux distro alive, and has a very good reputation esp. among professional users. Newbies may tend to Ub***u, but we can work on this. In general, openSUSE perception is positive as well.

2) for legal reasons of whatever kind. Here we are back in the discussion about the trademark 'openSUSE'. And this is something that needs to be solved and discussed with SUSE. Ideally SUSE grants openSUSE (Foundation, I assume) the unlimited and non-revocable right to use the brand 'openSUSE' under the terms and conditions of the foundation charter. In this ideal case there is no legal issue.

Assuming that SUSE still wants to keep the relationship I see a good chance that this right is given to the foundation. Board has to discuss terms and conditions with SUSE legal counselor, and report this back to the community. Only in case there is a real issue we should consider a name change.

Under no circumstance - never ever - we should change the brand without a need (in german: in vorauseilendem Gehorsam), as this has no benefit to the brand.

We would need to put some effort in a new CI/CD, and a massive investment in communication, under the risk that we end up as 'just another Linux distro'.

So, lets clarify terms and conditions for trademark usage, and then see if there is a need to change names.

For the moment I would not continue this discussion, for the above reasons.

Cheers Axel

Good morning, Axel! Fair point you are mentioning. But as far as I understood Richard Brown correctly, and unlimited and irrevocable right is not what we can get, as it will most likely be a right as we already have, probably even with more limitations. In case I misunderstood Richard Brown, I am quite sure it will end all discussion instantaneously. As you point out correctly, if you are able to get full, unlimited and irrevocable rights for the use of SUSE in openSUSE as a foundation name, we should stay with a well established name and brand. But, if I am right and understood Richard Brown correctly, well, then it's like I said: rather change at least the name for the community and foundation. At least we are still free to use openSUSE as a brand for all the foundation's and community's projects. Maybe on a way to a transition to rebrand them according to the foundation's and community's name and brand, but that could be kept open for a decision on the road. Kind regards Pierre -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 5:39 PM Jan Engelhardt wrote:

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

...

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

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

This is actually probably the only workable way to keep the openSUSE name. I mentioned this several levels upthread, though I forgot to cite examples in which this is done. As Stasiek and Richard know, I also mentioned this at oSC, though it was also outright dismissed then too. An example in which this has been done recently is actually with the Ziff Davis name and trademark. The Ziff Davis name, for a brief time, was actually maintained by a brand entity and was licensed to Ziff Davis Media and Ziff Davis Enterprise, two different companies with two different sets of websites. The two companies had originally been one company, and they'd split in two. ZDE failed, and was sold, so the ZDE name is no longer in use, but this had been a system used before. Another example in which this occurs is in American telecommunications, where the Cellular ONE brand and name is actually used by multiple companies that aren't related to each other other than licensing the brand. There are a few cellular service providers who do business with this brand name even though they hold no ancestry or relation to the company who owns the brand.

...

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

("its", please.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man... SUSE's identity confusion goes deeper than I had thought! It's funny that slightly tweaking from a chameleon to a gecko would actually add so much harmony to the brand... -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, 10 Jun 2019 at 18:32, Ronan Chagas 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. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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... -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 at 14:11, Stefan Seyfried wrote:

Am 11.06.19 um 14:06 schrieb Richard Brown:

...

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

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

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

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

;-)

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

Hi Richard,

Em 11 de jun de 2019, à(s) 09:06, Richard Brown 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 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 at 19:41, Neal Gompa wrote:

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 1:37 PM Ronan Chagas wrote:

...

Hi Richard,

...

Em 11 de jun de 2019, à(s) 09:06, Richard Brown 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 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

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 wrote:

...

Hi Richard,

...

Em 11 de jun de 2019, à(s) 09:06, Richard Brown 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. -- 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

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

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

Do you think openSUSE should change it's name?

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

Am 12.06.19 um 16:19 schrieb Ancor Gonzalez Sosa:

No matter how well you do the marketing. It will be perceived as a bad sign. The more positive you pain it, the most people will think "there must be something they are not telling us".

By putting the cart before the horse we are just sending a message of instability, fear and distrust about the SUSE<->openSUSE relationship.

By fixing something that is not broken (just in case it breaks in the distant future) you will be actually telling to the world that is already broken.

I could not have worded this better. Exactly my thoughts on the issue. Thanks Ancor! -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2019-06-11T14:24:09, Richard Brown wrote:

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

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

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

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

On czw, cze 13, 2019 at 9:19 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

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

...

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

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

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

On czw, cze 13, 2019 at 11:14 PM, Ronan Chagas wrote:

...

Em 13 de jun de 2019, à(s) 07:53, Lars Marowsky-Bree escreveu:

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

SUSE would lose significant community visibility.

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

I will try to propose something in the middle:

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

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

On 2019-06-14T08:38:30, Christian Imhorst wrote:

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

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

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

On pią, cze 14, 2019 at 5:57 PM, Lars Marowsky-Bree wrote:

...

On 2019-06-14T08:38:30, Christian Imhorst wrote:

...

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

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

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

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

Let me repeat this sentence with that rule in place:

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

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

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world

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

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

Hi LCP,

...

Em 14 de jun de 2019, ?(s) 13:57, Stasiek Michalski escreveu:

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

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

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

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

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

This comes as no surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On 17/06/2019 19:47, 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) -- 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 20/06/2019 05:03, Matwey V. Kornilov wrote:

Hi,

You say that an agreement will be required between SUSE and future openSUSE Foundation to use the logo. Given that openSUSE Leap is based on SLES in anyway, wouldn't an agreement still be required in any case to keep the existing development process integration level?

To keep it the way it is now yes, SUSE chooses to publish its source code in a very easy way for Leap to consume pre release, without this Leap development couldn't start properly until SLE is released presuming SUSE chooses to continue to make there source code open to non customers. It has to be said that Leap 15.1 was released before SLE 15 SP1 and SUSE has benefited greatly from the extra testing it has received from Leap users using the same code base. SUSE wants more people using its code base because it leads to better quality products for its customers so there are benefits to this approach both ways. There will also be agreements between SUSE and openSUSE with regards to SUSE managing the open build service hardware on its behalf aditionally USE would have to recreate a tumbleweed fork internally to produce SLE-16 internally so if such agreements ceased to exist it would have a seriously negative affect on SUSE just as it would openSUSE which is why the board has been pretty confident that we will be able to sort these issues out.

03.06.2019 9:01, Stasiek Michalski пишет:

...

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...

LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world