Shawn Walker wrote: > On 16/10/2007, Stephen Lau <stevel at opensolaris.org> wrote: > >> Ostrovsky, Boris wrote: >> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: James Carlson [mailto:james.d.carlson at sun.com] >>>> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:09 PM >>>> To: Ostrovsky, Boris >>>> Cc: Herman, George; ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>> Subject: RE: [ogb-discuss] Creating a place for AMD-related work >>>> >>>> Ostrovsky, Boris writes: >>>> >>>> >>>>>> You can certainly start a new community if you feel that's >>>>>> >>>>>> >>> necessary. >>> >>> >>>>>> The process for that is in the consititution, and requires OGB >>>>>> approval, as described in article VII: >>>>>> >>>>>> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/governance/ >>>>>> >>>>>> You'll need to work through the issues described in 7.4, including >>>>>> >>>>>> >>> the >>> >>> >>>>>> trademark problem, to get this done. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> This is interesting, I didn't notice the trademark requirement when >>>>> >>>>> >>> I >>> >>> >>>>> first read it. >>>>> >>>>> What about PowerPC, Xen and X Windows communities? These are owned >>>>> >>>>> >>> by >>> >>> >>>>> IBM, XenSource (Citrix?) and I think OpenGroup. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> That's a darned good question, but I don't have any clear answer for >>>> those specific groups. I just know what we approved in the >>>> constitution. >>>> >>>> >>> Not to mention Solaris itself, trademarked by Sun, and which therefore >>> is (paraphrasing 7.4) owned by an entity outside the OpenSolaris >>> Community. >>> >>> I am really bringing this up to understand whether creating AMD >>> community is even an option based on this restriction. I don't want to >>> create a constitutional crisis ;-) >>> >>> >>> >> The Xen one is a known issue. PowerPC and X Windows are news to me, or >> at least, I hadn't considered them before. >> It seems unreasonably stupid to not be able to utilise these >> trademarks. I would say if the usage of the trademarks within an >> OpenSolaris Community Group name does not violate the terms of use for >> the trademark as set by the trademark holder, then we (the OGB) should >> be okay with that. >> >> I'd be up for sponsoring this as an amendment to the constitution if >> necessary. >> > > That seems like the best solution although it does place someone here > in the uncomfortable position of ensuring that the conditions of use > for a trademark are followed. >
It seems that we (OpenSolaris) need to have some kind of legal oversight committee or somesuch. This comes as a result of trademark here. It also comes, as I discussed, because of a hole that will be created when we open up the source tree to putbacks from outside of Sun (and therefore don't require Sun's Open Source Review.) To be more clear, someone needs to make sure that the code being committed into OpenSolaris has licenses that are compatible with the project, and which do not create undue restrictions. And also, for example, checking that LGPL libraries or programs don't call GPL libraries, etc. When you consider projects which have had bizarro licenses (for good reasons or bad reasons) such as perl Artistic license, Atheros HAL license, or even the earlier ipfilter license, someone needs to double check things. This should be just another part of the RTI process (as it is today within Sun), but the OpenSolaris community has no one identified who is qualified to perform these tasks. Do we have any lawyers in our midst? (I promise not to throw tomatoes... :-) -- Garrett
