Louis Suarez-Potts <lsuarezpo...@gmail.com> wrote on 06/01/2011 09:41:08 PM:
> > * Apache Foundation owns the trademark to OOo? > * We at OOo receive lots of requests to use it for mostly good > purposes. We grant these, with minimal fuss and have set up systems > to do that more efficiently. With the change in trademark ownership— > if?—the situation will naturally change. I'd like some clarity on that. > Hi Louis, I'm glad to hear from you. If I understand your question correctly, we really need to understand three things: 1) What things did OpenOffice derivative projects do with the OpenOffice.org trademark when Sun/Oracle owned the trademark, things that we want to perpetuate under Apache? and 2) In the ordinarily case, what use of Apache project related trademarks are allowed to other projects/products based on Apache project code? and 3) What do we do if 1 and 2 conflict, e.g., if Sun/Oracle were more permissive than Apache is. I think this needs to start with understanding #1. For example, did anyone historically have a legitimate need to rebuild/repackage OpenOffice outside of the Apache project and still call it "OpenOffice" (unadorned)? My gut feeling is that would be dangerous. > * Similarly, OOo is more than a developer community; it's also a > shifting set of globally dispersed ecosystems built around the > primary application and concerned with the usual open source > matters—support, education, training, services, migration, etc. I've > worked hard to help set many of these up, and to establish the > ecosystems, so that there is a real market for the ODF and OOo, as > well as its relatives. What now? > I've tried to give a sense of the richness of this in the "community" section of the proposal on the wiki. I think you will be able to improve it, based on your experience. But we probably don't need a tome on it. But to your question, I think the ideal solution is to attract the right people. This is easier and more effective than recreating an ecosystem. And to attract the right people we need to show them how working in Apache can make them more effective. There are also some technical things we can do to make this easier, in terms of packaging, extension points, etc. And as was discussed earlier in the thread, the Apache 2.0 license encourages reuse and sharing, and thus facilitates the kind of ecosystem we want. > Finally, I'll call a special OpenOffice.org Community Council (what > is left of it, if any) to go over the quite significant (as in > totally tectonic) change. We—the OOo community, basically—really do > want and even need to understand the Quo of the Vadis: what we are > doing henceforth, where we are going. > > Excellent. I look forward to hearing how that meeting goes. -Rob
