Open Stack

On Feb 5, 2014, at 11:12 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> wrote:

> I don't have a big issue with the way the Foundation currently enforces
> "you must use the code" - anyone who signs a trademark agreement with
> the Foundation agrees to "include the entirety of" Nova's code. That's
> very vague, but I assume the Foundation can terminate the agreement if
> it thinks the other party is acting in bad faith.
> 
> Basically, I'm concerned about us swinging from a rather lax "you must
> include our code" rule to an overly strict "you must make no downstream
> modifications to our code”.

I tend to agree with you for the most part. As they exist today, the trademark licenses include a couple of components: legally agreeing to use the code in the projects specified (requires self certification from the licensee) and passing the approved test suite once it exists (which adds a component requiring external validation of behavior). By creating the test suite and selecting required capabilities that can be externally validated through the test suite, we would take a step in tightening up the usage and consistency enforceable by our existing legal framework.

I think that "designated sections” could provide a useful construct for better general guidance on where the extension points to the codebase are. From a practical standpoint, it would probably be pretty difficult to efficiently audit an overly strict definition of the designated sections and this would still be a self certifying requirement on the licensee.

Jonathan