Open Stack

On Wed, 2014-11-19 at 16:00 -0800, Joe Gordon wrote:

> 
> * When removing appendix 8, you are removing the explicit guarantee
> that the OpenStack Word Mark is shared with the community. While I
> fully support making it easier to adjust the commercial trademark
> usage, I am not very keen on making it easier to change the guarantee
> that the non-commercial trademark usage.
> 
> 
> "We share the OpenStack Word Mark with the community for the purposes of open source 
> discussion, development and support of the OpenStack project and technology. We understand 
> that such use is mostly for non-commercial purposes and therefore we will allow the use of the 
> OpenStack Word Mark, without a license, when used in a “referential” phrase only to describe 
> the OpenStack Project or the OpenStack code base, provided you comply with the following 
> requirements:"

Agree with the concern, and I said similarly previously:

http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/defcore-committee/2014-September/000384.html

  As for removing the trademark policy from the bylaws, I see the policy
  as a high-level set of principles about how the trademarks should be
  managed and I'm fine with those principles requiring bylaws changes.
  However, specific implementation details of those principles (like the
  exact set of trademark programs) should determined by the board.

  In other words, if there are parts of the trademark policy which are
  "implementation details" which we feel should be determined by the
  board, why not just remove those details from the policy?

It's true the current policy goes into a little too much of the
implementation details - i.e. the details of the existing commercial
trademark programs - but allows the Foundation to create other programs:

  http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2014-June/001701.html

    It lays out several of the licensing programs that existed at the
    time of drafting but also states "Other licensing programs may be
    available for a specific use.

and this is why an "OpenStack Powered Compute"[1] program could be
introduced with no bylaws-changing trademark policy change required.

So it appears to me that removing the trademark policy from the bylaws
isn't required for us to make progress on anything, but it does - as you
say - remove that assurance that the trademark will always be available
for non-commercial use.

Mark.

[1] - http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/defcore-committee/2014-October/000418.html