-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Benj. Mako Hill wrote: | You weren't explicit about the non-profit aspect in the message in any | sort of categorical way but I want to step forward and say that I do | not want to see commercial entities calling themselves Debian-anything
I am curious about why? You state you don't want to see it, but don't give any supporting argument. I myself am always very suspicious as to the motive of for profit companies appearing to leverage Free Software projects. However, I will say that if good ground rules are laid down and policy in place that must be adhered to, I don't readily see why any for profit company willing to obey the guidelines should be excluded. | and am not sure from a trademark perspective, this would be a wise | choice at all. If you want to protect trademark, then I suspect not letting *anyone* use it is the safest approach. Not necessarily the best, but the safest. | The line I want draw here, and I think you're saying the same thing, | is that we'd be explaining to people what the "XXX Debian Labs" means | and why it is different than Debian. We should *not* create a list of | criteria that if you or your organization matches, you automatically | get to start using the name. I think this needs to be dealt with on a | case-by-case basis. It should be a submission and review process. However, I think there should be criteria/guidelines that are the starting point. (i.e. if you don't meet X then you are automatically disqualified from acceptance) This makes acceptance much more equitable. |>Also, is there anyone interested in helping develop these |>guidelines? | | | I foresee two sets of guidelines that need to be written. The first is | the one that we (non-lawyers and probably Debian developers) write | that explains what we think, in broad terms, Debian-Labs should | mean. This is what we put on our website. Probably the "criteria" of what one needs to do in order to be accepted to use the "Debian Labs" name so to speak should be a Debian project development. | The second set of guidelines is the Trademark License Agreement that | specifies, in legal terms, the guidelines we've specified above. This | is what the actually organizations agree to. It will need to be | written up by our lawyers. The contract/agreement that the entity using the "Debian Labs" name signs or agrees to, should likely be a legal document drafted by lawyers. | In terms of the first, I began work on this a week and a half ago as | part of a larger project to define, at this sort of level, the | relationship between Debian, SPI, and several types of affiliated | organizations. Of course, I'd very much welcome help and I'll contact | the people who responded to this off-list to see about collaboration. At one point, we were doing something similar with Free Software Foundation Europe called the GNU Business Network. It different in many ways, but very much was in process of drafting acceptable criterion for businesses to agree to for membership. You can find some early drafts here http://www.gnuenterprise.org/~dneighbo/gnubiz/ Likely most of the document is irrelevant. However, the criteria section might be of some use to draw off of. Just thoughts. Derek Neighbors GNU Enterprise http://www.gnue.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/bNXbHb99+vQX/88RAhTHAJ9LTy1XRSSKuFp/Zpxhak4BOK9t4wCgje3R 15EGZg4zPEKscS8hLdsI0wY= =Sve5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
