User talk:Pfrields/New trademark guidelines

Use this page to discuss problems that are not yet resolved with the use cases seen on the content page itself.

Business cards

(Should we point people here to Ambassadors/BusinessCards? Do we want people to use the business card template that we advertise, or are we ok with anything homemade? We need to follow up on Ian's work to make a new Business Card template. --Max)

(I believe Ian's card template is the way to go, and we should require Ambassadors to use it. I feel that's a very low barrier for some project cohesion. -- Paul)

Originality/usefulness of spins

So, the granting of trademark permission is only based on whether or not 100% of the spin is in the Fedora repositories? Is there any sort of "usefulness" or "originality of spin" requirement, or is that a separate process? --Max

I think there needs to be some sort of 'usefulness/originality' metric for anything advertising it as 'Fedora <whatever>'. -- Bill

If it's gonna be named "Fedora <whatever>" it has gone through the Spin Submission Process, which takes into account the usefulness of spins being advertised as "Fedora <whatever>". We will however, NOT accept spins with patches unless there's a very, very good reason. Topic in this little thread might be a little misleading --Jeroen

Domain names

Well, we can't exactly force this on anyone - see fedora.org. -- Bill

• I'd like to find out how much carrot and how much stick have been applied in that particular case to date. -- Paul

Hybrid? FOSS? ISV?

On the "Hybrid Pure Fedora-derived spins and additional content on same medium", or "Pure Fedora-derived spins", not entirely clear:

• Joe wants to hand out his Presentation/Artwork on a Fedora Live CD or USB thumb drive - pure Fedora, added content
• Doh Inc. wants to demo their ISV product

"Hybrid pure derived?"

Which is it?

1. Hybrid? Free and Open Source software altogether, found in Fedora, but with added content?
2. Pure? Pure genuine Fedora altogether?
3. Derived? Recompiled and rebranded and not Fedora anymore?

• This is an interesting question. I would say the Live USB presents a thornier issue. With a Live CD, the image in its entirety is what makes up the content of the media. With a Live USB, it's not as simple -- because someone can distribute materials outside the image we call "Fedora." My take on it is that if someone takes advantage of that Live USB feature to distribute some added content outside the Live image, we don't have any controlling interest in that "outside space," if you will. We'd want someone in that case to refer to it as "Fedora plus X added content." The previous guidelines allowed for that sort of treatment, as long as the distributor leaves the addition of the outside materials to the user's discretion. The distributor could even include an Autorun enabler, as long as it didn't automatically take any action without the user being given the choice. -- Paul

• See below, but i think that there are two items "Based On" and "Derived From". Based on adds packages to Fedora, but does not change anythin in Fedora. It would be nice to have to rebrand in that case.. or have a fedora-based-logos.rpm (This is your Hybrid Model). Derived changes something in fedora. I could see not supporting Derived. -- bkearney
  • This seems like a very confusing approach to me. I think this is best covered with a simple approach -- either a derived spin is only made with materials from the Fedora repositories, or it is not. Having two different marks like this has already been proven to be unworkable, see Microsoft's earlier forays into "Made for Vista," "Vista certified," et al. The more clever we try to be, the more problems we are likely creating. I don't think we want to go there. -- Paul
    • I am fine with a single "based on" which is additive packages not in fedora, not modifications to items in fedora. I think this should apply to all forms of use (spins, appliances, usbs, etc)

• The original question remains. Either something is "Fedora", or something is "derived from" OR "based on" Fedora, which is quite the same. Added content to a USB thumb drive still is a Fedora OS installation.
  • I think the comment directly above was from Jeroen. Yes, that's much clearer in the current state of the page. You're either purely Fedora, or not. The former gets the Fedora mark; the latter, the secondary mark. Images are treated the same way whether they're raw disk, Live ISOs, or installation sets -- we shouldn't get into declaring those technicalities because it just means more loopholes and headaches. -- Paul

Appliances (Related to ISVS)

• Live USB, and Appliance tools allow anyone to distribute running systems. It is highly likely that they will want to add additional software (both FOSS and not) to the media. I would like to see a policy which allows them to say "based on fedora". I believe it would need to have the following guidelines. (bkearney)
  1. Include fedora repositories
  2. Include different fedora logos
  3. Only add packages which are not in fedora (i.e. I can not replace glibc and say it is "based" on fedora). Per this from mark webbink, I believe that the additional packages in (3) need not be FOSS. There is probably some additional license statement/requirements that must be done to allow this. (bkearney)
  • The actual text will probably not be "based on Fedora." But we will find some acceptable term that makes sense. (pfrields)
    • That is fine, as long as there is some notion that the company is delivering an appliance which uses fedora. Good for the company, good for fedora. --bkearney
  • The document to which you link concerns FOSS licensing and patentability, but doesn't really have anything to do with trademark guidelines. But I agree completely that the downstream applicance creator who uses any non-Fedora materials in an applicance would be responsible for addressing any of the licensing concerns over and above what Fedora provides. (pfrields)
    • I put that link there becuase I believe an appliance is not a deriviative work. Rather, it is an aggregation. So.. ACME vendor could distribute an appliance which is a proprietary application "using/based on/built on/" fedora. -- bkearney

Pure Fedora spins with other content on same medium

I am glad to see this under trusted. Why limit this to live-cd? What about raw disk images, or some other binary/bootable item yet to be created? --bkearney

• My intention isn't to limit, just to give use cases (examples) that demonstrate an application of the guideline, to help define what we're trying to achieve with the legal text. The take-away in this case is that we are not concerned with anything *outside* the image purporting to be Fedora. If it's a raw disk image, that image is either purely Fedora or it's not, which determines for which mark it's eligible. If it's a Live image, same thing. If you distribute a purely Fedora VM image along with an .ISO file of extra stuff, that's Fedora. If you distribute the same image with extra content inside, it's "derived/based on/foo." -- Paul

Fedora-derived spins

I am glad to see this under trustd. an we remove the applying for board approval? -- bkearney

• If I understand you correctly, yes, we're trying to remove gating on the Board for this, moving instead to a community trust model. Enforcement will still be down to the Board and Red Hat Legal as always, we just presume someone's a good guy until he makes a mess. -- Paul
  • great. Can we remove the first line which says "Community members may apply for Board permission to use the "Fedora Upstream" mark....."

• Looks like the secondary mark will still require board approval. Is that correct? -- bkearney
  • Whoops, that was my mistake when I was editing. I was looking at too many old drafts. -- Paul