Re: Review of personal information sources in Debian
Hi Enrico, I needed to escape the problem that UDD has sometimes several different spellings for the name of the very same person. I hacked around a bit and finally settled with http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=teammetrics/teammetrics.git;a=blob;f=maintain_names_prefered.py;hb=HEAD It is not in official UDD code because it needs manual intervention from time to time and is hackish and dirty anyway. But when using it on blends.debian.net to create statistics abput uploaders and bug reporters for certain teams it is definitely helpful. Just to let you know Andreas. -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120814072921.gf6...@an3as.eu
Feedback on your Whois system proposal - Was: Re: Review of personal information sources in Debian
Hi. Martín Ferrari writes: > On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 6:24 AM, Enrico Zini wrote: >> I've recently done a review of personal information sources in Debian, >> which I'd like to share here both because I don't think this has been >> done before, and to check if I missed anything. > > Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this issue recently. While > thinking about the design for the Whois project I'm planning [1], one > stumbling block I find is that there are many unsynchronised sources > of (public) personal information in Debian, and most important, that > there is not a single identity provider to sync them. > > Sounds like you may be working on something like that, and in that > case I'd be interested in being involved. I think a service that > provides a centralised database of identities, which allows each > person to tailor how their identity is exposed, would be very helpful, > and would allow to improve many other services that currently rely on > incomplete identity information, specially for non-D[DM]s. > > > [1] http://beta.howtorecognise.mine.nu/blog/whois.html > Do you have any preferred means to receive some feedback on your proposal (I can't seem to find some comments on your blog post) ? Thanks in advance. Best regards, -- Olivier BERGER http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8 Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87txw5vor3@inf-8657.int-evry.fr
Re: Review of personal information sources in Debian
Enrico Zini writes: > Hello, > > I've recently done a review of personal information sources in Debian, > which I'd like to share here both because I don't think this has been > done before, and to check if I missed anything. > SNIP > > > Did I miss anything in this review? Is everything represented correctly? > Dunno, but that's a very interesting piece of docs IMHO. Would you consider adding this to wiki.d.o so that it can be maintained collaboratively ? Hope this helps. Best regards, -- Olivier BERGER http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8 Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4r9vooh@inf-8657.int-evry.fr
Re: trademark policy draft
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 03:30:16PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Down to the specificities of Debian procedures, I consider my duty
> > to take care of Debian assets, including trademarks. I would not
> > take the responsibility of acting in a way that --- according to our
> > legal advisors --- might endanger them..
>
> Even if there was a clear consensus that endangering the trademark was
> the Right Thing To Do?
[…]
> For a free software project like Debian, I believe it's more important
> to uphold the principle of not being jerky to our neighbors than it is
> to have an ironclad assurance that our trademark could never be
> invalidated. I don't think the argument "we could lose our trademark
> unless we [...]" is complete unless it also includes some examination
> of how likely that outcome really is.
You raised various important points.
According to my reading of the sub-thread started at Thijs' message, we
were discussing giving up the trademarks all together ("just let go of
these trademarks" [1]). As it happens, different participants in the
sub-thread might have head different opinions. But on such an extreme
position, yes, I don't think I would trust apparent consensus on any
mailing list.
For various reasons. One is that many people tend not to care about
"bureaucratic" topics (and I surely won't blame them for that :-)).
Another is that it'd be a typical instance of the age long democracy vs
technocracy debate. Very few of us --- if any --- are experts in
trademark law (as several threads have shown), and I do not consider
myself among them. So the consensus would hardly be well-informed.
The above doesn't imply we could not implement the extreme position of
giving up trademarks. It simply mean that I wouldn't personally do it,
on the sole basis of apparent consensus. There are other ways, such as a
GR, overruling me or not (depending on how it'll be formulated0. It
wouldn't be such a big deal, and I surely would not take it personally.
[1] as I'm not sure if a formal act to do that exists, let's assume for
the sake of this discussion "give up trademark" ~= "act in a way
that would be considered, trademark-wise, foolish by any trademark
expert you could find on the planet"
> I'm hoping to write a longer response to the proposed policy where I
> can do justice to the specifics,
Please do :-)
> but for the moment, suffice it to say that I think that some of the
> recommendations for how to protect our trademark cross the line from
> "things it's reasonable for everyone to do to protect their mark" into
> "jerky things that you do because there's some bit of case law
> somewhere that led to a mark being invalidated and you're paranoid
> that the same thing will happen to you". Sometimes the right answer
> is that the case law is *bad* and needs to be overturned - which never
> happens if no one is willing to take a stand against it.
I agree with this. In dealing with lawyers on behalf of Debian, I've
quickly learned that there are almost never "100% safe" or "100% risky"
positions. It is *always* a cost/benefit/risk analysis. You ask the
experts to evaluate the risks of the positions you're interested in, and
then you pick a position.
I wouldn't call the position implemented by the first policy I've posted
here "paranoid". But, as I mentioned before, there might be extra
constraints that might be loosened, which have fallen through the
cracks. I do hope that most of the criticism that have been raised in
this thread could be addressed in the second draft --- but as I haven't
yet received it, I'm not sure yet.
If you, or anyone else, have arguments to justify the loosening of
further constraints in the policy, by all means bring them forward. But
please realize that I will likely turn down arguments of the "I think
that..." kind, when they go against the legal advice we've got.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, August 14, 2012 16:51, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > I agree with this. In dealing with lawyers on behalf of Debian, I've > quickly learned that there are almost never "100% safe" or "100% risky" > positions. It is *always* a cost/benefit/risk analysis. You ask the > experts to evaluate the risks of the positions you're interested in, and > then you pick a position. It's surely a cost/benefit/risk analysis, but either of them is hard to quantify. We may know how much money we pay to the registration offices (do we?), but there's also the manpower we spend on drafting a policy, processing trademark requests, consuming the time of our legal advisors, etc. And a potential cost in goodwill (being perceived as 'jerky'). The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free. It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of which we do not know if or when it will happen. Or how many extra costs we need to incur then to actually enforce our trademark in the legal system. Keeping the trademarks has costs, the benefits are uncertain, and there seem to be many examples of projects getting along fine without any. For me the tradeoff is clear. Cheers, Thijs -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ba699cde998bc92d936432a64a5c0535.squir...@wm.kinkhorst.nl
Re: trademark policy draft
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something > nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free. > It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of > which we do not know if or when it will happen. For what its worth, there are existing situations: e.g. debian-news.net, debian-administration.org, debianadmin.com, debian-handbook.info, debian-multimedia.org. Only one of those has been specifically opposed by the project, and a kind request resulted in a domain rename without any kind of legal wrangling (now deb-multimedia.org). So, point being that results can already be achieved without any kind of legal hammer. Best wishes, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CANTw=mnyo4-xitacfbbspqh_yjufkedoroupz7a0xq4qvv_...@mail.gmail.com
Re: trademark policy draft
Michael Gilbert writes ("Re: trademark policy draft"):
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> > The benefit is that we have a legal tool against someone doing something
> > nasty with our name. Which is nice to have, but doesn't come for free.
> > It's hard to quantify as well: the benefit is for a future situation of
> > which we do not know if or when it will happen.
>
> For what its worth, there are existing situations: e.g.
> debian-news.net, debian-administration.org, debianadmin.com,
> debian-handbook.info, debian-multimedia.org.
>
> Only one of those has been specifically opposed by the project, and a
> kind request resulted in a domain rename without any kind of legal
> wrangling (now deb-multimedia.org).
I don't think you can say that this rename wasn't made easier by our
possession of the trademark. I wasn't involved in the discussions
with the other project but whenever you have a negotation like this,
the legal context is in the background.
Like any other dispute, these kinds of things are normally resolved
without having to go to a formal dispute resolution - but what _would_
happen if the dispute were to be escalated is a very important factor
in the negotiations.
Ian.
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Re: Feedback on your Whois system proposal - Was: Re: Review of personal information sources in Debian
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Olivier Berger wrote: > Do you have any preferred means to receive some feedback on your > proposal (I can't seem to find some comments on your blog post) ? Sorry, I've never had the patience or motivation to enable them :) Email to this very thread seems like a great place to discuss it :) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAL60Pd_T4n0Q5TLQLDmhd11L3Q5Ym4U+5+R=p2xqk2se-ir...@mail.gmail.com
