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 -- 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