On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Roman Shaposhnik <ro...@shaposhnik.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Ted Dunning <ted.dunn...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Roman, > > > > That was a *really* long email. > > Well, I do those from time to time ;-) > > > 1) The concept of a brand covering some artifact doesn't come into play > at > > all. Instead, there are two things that happen. The first is that the > PMC > > approves releases which defines each such release as an Apache release. > > The second process is that the ASF controls the use of its trademarks. > > The question is: do we have ASF-wide trademark guidelines or do > we allow each PMC to make those as they go. > Yes. We do have ASF-wide trademark guidelines and we also allow PMC's to have pretty broad latitude within those boundaries. The PMC definitely should not be making things up, but they do have a lot of responsibility for deciding what they don't like. > 2) Apache Approved releases are approved collections of software. > > That's way too vague for me. I'm not really sure what 'software' means. > That is going to be hard for me to help you with. > > The PMC approves artifacts containing known as releases and validates > their > > contents with signatures so that consumers can verify this. Only approved > > releases should be referred to as Apache releases, but anybody else can > > make their own releases under any level of diligence that they would like > > to apply. This is well covered in the release policy: > > http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#what > > The devil, as usual, is in the details. When I look at something like: > > http://pkgs.org/centos-7/centos-x86_64/httpd-2.4.6-31.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm.html > it is very tempting to assume it was a release of ASF software. > And you might take that to the Apache httpd PMC. > 3) The control of the abstract concept of the brand is done via trademarks > > which is all about how the trademarked words and logos are used and has > > nothing much to do with content of releases and everything to do with > > control and possibility of confusion. > > I disagree. ASF owns the trademarks, but then it is up to the foundaiton > to define clear guidelines. > I am not clear what you disagree with. I didn't say that the ASF didn't own the trademarks so that can hardly be the problem. The fact that trademarks are only protected insofar as confusing usage is trademarks 101 (see http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics)
