Hey, I'm inclined towards freedom with respect to the use of the trademark. I personally was drawn towards the Apache 2.0 license because of its more liberal stance on source code modifications; I worked hard to submit many of our internal projects at Facebook to the ASF against significant internal resistance because I felt that the ASF would uphold this ecumenical stance in the face of corporate interests for control. I'm surprised by the consensus for complex controls versus promiscuity.
I'm skeptical of any argument that relies on the ignorance of the customer. When a press release from Company X comes out using the Apache Hadoop name, that raises awareness for the project. Customers are smart enough to ask whether Company X make significant contributions to the Apache Hadoop project, and to discern in what ways the project deviates form the Apache Hadoop releases. We need to consider the benefit as well as the harm to the project when these Apache Hadoop-related projects use the Apache Hadoop trademark: in this particular case, I believe the benefit exceeds the harm. If we were shipping pharmaceuticals or food, I'd feel differently. As it stands, we're shipping software used by highly informed and technical customers. Let's give them the right to make up their mind, and provide further encouragement for other companies to pile on the Apache Hadoop name. Further, enforcing these regulations will require significant manpower. In my experience, the ASF is run by a small and dedicated staff. I'd prefer if their energies were directed towards the maintenance of the infrastructure for hosting and developing projects, as well as the mechanisms for making projects develop more rapidly. While there is great enthusiasm for drafting these rules right now, I suspect that sustained enthusiasm for the enforcement of these rules will prove more difficult to muster. Lastly, I'd love to learn more about how other prominent open source projects have approached this issue. If you have any knowledge about how Linux handled the use of its trademark, please add your thoughts to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-rules-for-using-the-Linux-trademark-in-a-product-name. Because Apache Hadoop is a kernel technology, similar to Linux, I suspect there are many useful lessons to learn. Or at least crazy email threads to read. Anyways, that's my version of the "the more, the merrier" argument. I'm pretty excited to see EMC and IBM show up on our doorstep. I'd be even more excited to see them contribute code; I suspect that will happen in time, if we create a welcoming community. Later, Jeff ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shane Curcuru <a...@shanecurcuru.org> Date: Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 7:45 AM Subject: Re: [VOTE] Shall we adopt the "Defining Hadoop" page To: tradema...@apache.org Cc: general@hadoop.apache.org One clarification: I've only had time to review the wiki document for some terminology updates, and not for the overall content yet. So from the trademarks@ point of view, more review is needed before we work on making this official. >From the significant amount of discussion in this vote thread, I think it might be good to have the Hadoop PMC and trademarks@ work on getting a more organized consensus first, before voting on an updated proposed Hadoop policy. - Shane Owen O'Malley wrote: > All, > Steve Loughran has done some great work on defining what can be called > Hadoop at > http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/**Defining%20Hadoop<http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Defining%20Hadoop>< > http://wiki.apache.org/**hadoop/Defining<http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Defining>Hadoop>. > After some cleanup from Noirin and Shane, I think we've got a > really good base. I'd like a vote to approve the content (at the current > revision 12) and put the content on our web site. > > > Clearly, I'm +1. > > -- Owen >
