Open Stack

Hi Joe,

I’ve copied in your comment from the other thread so people on this thread can see what you said.

> * When removing appendix 8, you are removing the explicit guarantee
> that the OpenStack Word Mark is shared with the community. While I
> fully support making it easier to adjust the commercial trademark
> usage, I am not very keen on making it easier to change the guarantee
> that the non-commercial trademark usage.
>
>
> "We share the OpenStack Word Mark with the community for the purposes of open source 
> discussion, development and support of the OpenStack project and technology. We understand 
> that such use is mostly for non-commercial purposes and therefore we will allow the use of the 
> OpenStack Word Mark, without a license, when used in a “referential” phrase only to describe 
> the OpenStack Project or the OpenStack code base, provided you comply with the following 
> requirements:"

A couple of thoughts:

First, the updates as proposed do not remove the explicit guarantee. There are no changes to the trademark policy as of yet, so that guarantee remains in place. Going forward, the Board could update the policy and could even remove it, but it would really undermine the purpose of the Foundation and I don’t see that happening.

I understand your concern about making these kinds of changes easier and have shared it during several of the DefCore discussions in the last year. Even going back to the initial drafting phase in 2012, I was a big proponent of making the trademark policy subject to the super high bar amendment requirement to protect this right.

In practice however, over the last two years, I have seen that having an operational document like the trademark policy be so rigidly defined gets in the way of administering it as the community and ecosystem continues to grow and change really rapidly. Essentially this change moves the authority for as extensive operational legal document from the individual membership of 17,000+ to the Board—the representative governance body for the Foundation.

Over these two years, I’ve also outgrown most of my concern about the worst case scenario playing out if the trademark policy is not subject to that high bar amendment requirement. The Board has a strong understanding of how important it is to maintain the health of the community and has worked hard to gather a lot of community feedback (for things like DefCore for instance). To be honest, if we got to the point where we had a Board that was so far removed from the needs of the community that they wanted to remove the community’s right to use the logo, we’d probably be facing even bigger problems than trademark usage. Personally, as long as I have a part in the Foundation, I would never support a move to make a policy change like that.

Jonathan



> On Nov 24, 2014, at 4:35 PM, Joe Gordon <joe.gordon0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 10:32 AM, Alan Clark <aclark at suse.com> wrote:
> Foundation Mailing List Subscribers,
> 
> As you are aware from previous postings and various committee meetings, the Board is considering three potential changes to the OpenStack Foundation bylaws, as a result of the work during the Defcore Committee's activities (http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/defcore-committee)
> 
> We would like your additional feedback on the latest draft, prior to the next Board meeting on December 2. If the proposed amendments are passed at the Board meeting, they will each be on the ballot in the upcoming election January 12th-16th 2015.   We do want to hear from you.
> 
> An explanation of the three amendments and the proposed language is available  on the wiki:
> https://wiki.openstack.org/w/index.php?title=Governance/Foundation/2014ProposedBylawsAmendment
> 
> Please provide feedback here on the Foundation mailing list. (foundation at lists.openstack.org)
> 
> 
> I have a question/concern from that was raised on the TC mailing list, but is still unanswered.
> 
> http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-tc/2014-November/000883.html
>  
> Note that the  Technical Committee (TC) has been discussing the changes as well and an archive is available here:
>  http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-tc/2014-November/000871.html
> 
> Regards,
> AlanClark
> 
> 
> 
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