Shawn Walker writes: > On Dec 20, 2007 12:10 PM, James Carlson <james.d.carlson at sun.com> wrote: > > If there's non-community-originated material, then I'd question > > whether it belongs on opensolaris.org at all. > > Obviously, there must be some sanity in this. > > Sun provided almost all of the material that our website has on it. > > Even if you say that they contributed that through their employees > acting as community members, there is some of that content that is > arguably Sun's alone (such as trademarks, logos, marketing material, > Solaris Express related items, binary blobs for OpenSolaris, etc.). > > Throwing out everything that is "non-community-originated" would leave > us with not a whole lot.
That's not at all what I suggested. Instead, if you look back at the message I was responding to, Simon Phipps was supposing that we would have opensolaris.org editorial changes that come from no community group at all: > > > the website CG's CCs have content roles that the OGB expects all CG > > > content to be in perfect for-publication condition from its > > > originators. Further, it seems to be anticipated that all non-text > > > elements and non-CG-originated materials will be supplied by > > > polymaths in other CGs. I think it should be up to the community at large to determine what to do with materials that are proposed for use on the common areas of the web site, and given the committee that we'd previously approved, that'd be in their area to review. Perhaps that should apply to CG input as well as to random input from non-members. It seems a surprising question to have to ask, but I'm more than willing to defer to the committee. Until it's been proven otherwise, I'm going to assume that the people chosen for the committee are reasonable people who can make some reasonable choices. I'm not going to assume that they're evil or that they're somehow out to damage Sun. I suspect that others think this, but I'm just baffled why that'd be a concern. > Part of the problem I see in this review board is that Sun has the > full right to control marketing materials related to their trademark > that are outside the scope of fair use. That's correct. > This means, for example, that if they decide that there should be a > new OpenSolaris logo for the OpenSolaris trademark, they have the full > right to do that. That's likely an issue that the committee will need to resolve, yes. I see no reason at all to try to resolve it here, now, and on their behalf. I'd _assume_ that they're capable of making reasonable and legal decisions, and if they're not, we'll pull the plug on them and pick something else. In other words, it's always possible to run around screaming that one or another part of the sky might fall. It might well happen. But if that's all we worry about, then we're not going to move forward. The proposal for a committee was reasonably formulated, and a majority of the board agreed to put it in place. I don't think the idea was at all haphazard (again, I think some of the people commenting here believe that to be true) or ill-considered. > If Sun does make a new logo, who gets the say over whether it goes to > our website, etc.? > > The current materials are certainly strictly controlled by Sun. That's where I think the error occurs. Sun currently doesn't control the project pages or the community group pages that live on opensolaris.org, so asserting that content control for all of opensolaris.org is in Sun's hands is strictly untrue. The control is less than that, but how much less? I believe the answer needs to be that Sun controls Sun's assets, but that the community controls its own spaces delegated by Sun. If the community can't control its own spaces, including the editorial content of the common areas of the web site, then all bets are off. The previous arguments for having a community group or a project team in charge of the web site are just as invalid as will be this OGB committee. That's not a contingency that *either* side of this debate has been allowing for, so if that happens, we'll need to adjust plans accordingly. (I can't predict the future, but my _guess_ would be that we'd need to abolish the committee and abandon any talk of a website CG. An open question would be what to do about getting common space for the community itself. I believe that it does need common space.) (OK, maybe I can predict the future: this whole thing is a horrible time sink. One term here is at least one too many.) -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
