Hey Robert, Thanks for this; it was obviously a lot of work! I like the word picks, flow and style of this guide a lot. There's a lot to read here and some new stuff to learn for me -- I confess I've been ignoring as much about trademarks as I can until a time comes up when I actually have a need to dig into it more. So I can't really help write, but I can ask questions :)
On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitt...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Robert Burrell Donkin > <robertburrelldon...@gmail.com> wrote: >> The new documentation describing in more detail one way to check the >> suitability of the proposed name is just about ready for public review > > The URL is http://incubator.apache.org/guides/names.html > >> It's fine to just dive in to improve phrasing, add examples etc. Once the information is collected and collated, then ask the trademark team to help interpret and analyse these results on the private lists, copying in the PPMC. Finally discuss the results of your investigation on the private PPMC list. We could probably do with some guidance of *how* to do this discussion. I.e. I _assume_ the CC is to trademarks@ but it's not stated. Similarly it's not quite clear what things need to be discussed. The discussion could be "well a lot of stuff uses this name too but whatever it's probably ok" -- "+1", or it could be "looks risky we may need to evaluate whether we are infringing" (and then what happens?). >> Here's a good place to ask questions. This thread is also a good place >> to discuss content and dispute process details. * I personally think the way you wrote down that this is one possible approach is quite clear. I'll leave it to others to fix what they don't like about it ;-) I agree it's important that we know it's one possible way to care of this stuff. For example with Apache OpenOffice or Apache SpamAssassin or Apache Jena or other long-existing projects that come to the incubator the process is different since they typically did it years ago, are known to be the number one hit for that phrase, etc etc. * It's not clear to me what role the trademarks folks have in this process; I thought trademarks@ was primarily concerned with defending our marks, and providing policy to PMCs, i.e. not with doing the picking of the marks we use? Is it an advisory role because these folks happen to have experience, or is the advice intended to be, err, 'binding'? * If you are a new project and you have to pick a name, this is a useful guide. If you are a new project and you picked a name, but you didn't do your due diligence, you need to be nudged rather insistingly into doing your due diligence. And that then has a painful dynamic to it, because a group of people picked and decided and voted on a name and then they changed it. To fix this, we could put the process for the picking of the suitable name as part of the proposal process, i.e. you can choose to do it before you even send your proposal to general@. WDYT? > Thus, instead of setting strict rules and requirements, I think the > guide should just document the best current practice and suggest why > following it is a good idea. Hmm, so there's an interesting balance here, and it's probably overdue for some shifting. I think we do need to make clearer the MUSTs around trademarks to new projects, basically passing on the PMC responsibilities we've gotten from the board via trademarks@. Perhaps we need another bit of documentation in the policy that points out the MUSTs, and then that bit links to this guide. cheers, Leo --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
