On Apr 20, 2007, at 17:22, Eric Boutilier wrote: > Steve, nice!
Nice piece of work, Stephen, thanks for taking all that trouble. > > So even though this is still in the draft stage, there's no reason > not to > start using it now to help new project owners avoid opening > projects with > unsuitable names. With that in mind, currently there are 3 recent > proposals > that are in the process of opening. Here are the proposed names and > my take > (comments welcome of course) on the disposition of each. We do have to take into account that trademark collisions still have to be avoided, even though we're only talking about projects here. Since OpenSolaris is hosted by Sun, Sun remains liable for any infringement of trademark law anywhere in the world. Since Sun is perceived as having deep pockets, that could well lead to unexpected lawsuits, which these days can come with substantial invoices attached to the cease & desist letter. I believe Sara will be able to give more detailed guidelines, but in general, names should aim to be descriptive. If a "decorative" name is wanted, at least check on Google whether it's in use anywhere in a way that's connected with IT before suggesting it. > > Eric > > Proposed name: Open Fabrics User Verbs / API support on Solaris > O.K. (similar to OpenGrok) OK - Descriptive. > > Proposed name: CPK Cryptosystem > O.K. (similar to CIFS) OK - Descriptive. > > Proposed name: Project Tesla: Solaris Enhanced Power Management > Not O.K. > Suggest: "Tesla: Solaris Enhanced Power Management" > (similar to... several, e.g. Reno and Tamarack) Not OK - Decorative. * The use of "Project" as a prefix was probably an attempt to mitigate any trademark impact, so scrapping it might not be smart * the actual problem is the use of the noun "Tesla", which is the name of a company that makes radio transmitters (http:// www.tesla.cz/). Might not be a problem, but we'd need to spend > $10k with a lawyer to be completely sure. * Including "Solaris" or "OpenSolaris" in the name is redundant since the community already acts as a container for the project and has that name. In addition, should the project ever get a purpose outside the scope of OpenSolaris there would be a trademark issue for Sun.
