Why we DO need a legal entity, why it must have "Fedora" in it's name and why it must be granted the trademark

[Gerold Kassube]

Hey Guys, ...

and you all know that this will never happen again!
There is a PROFIT Organisation, who is holding the Trademark (of Fedora)
and this (Trademark) will been never given to the community. 
Said that it is also clear, that a NPO with Fedora in it's name (to be
different to other foo-Linux-support-entitys) also will never happen,
because there is a legal issue that Red Hat (as a Stock listed company)
cann't support a NPO with the name of the Trademark they are holding ...
This lookd like money washing (was explained to me).

This is why Fedora EMEA e.V. has failed.

God bless you Christoph, that you'll get your mone. I'm waiting since
January (and the bills where also paid then).

Do you remember FAD at FOSDEM in Brussels? I'm also sure that Jan is not
able to get the CEO of Red Hat to FOSDEM 2012 to hold a keynote and show
us, that Red Hat is supporting 
- Linux in generell
- their "own" community called Fedora
- the people who do the shit at every community event (because since
years I haven't seen any Red Hat booth at an community event) ....

Tell and write things are mostly different to the act of the writer or
speaker      :-(

All the best

Gerold


Am Samstag, den 21.05.2011, 01:06 +0200 schrieb Christoph Wickert:
> (Sorry for the longish subject, I hope I have your attention now.)
> 
> LinuxTag is over. I had to catch up a lot because I missed 4 days of
> work and I didn't find the time to blog about it. Nevertheless I want to
> share what I have learned as the primary event owner.
> 
> 1. We need credit cards
> 
> We need credit cards or a reliable way to get money. I know of people
> who are waiting for money for months and depending on the amount it can
> be really bad. I paid for nearly all LinuxTag expenses, more than 2500
> EUR. In addition to that I booked the hotel for Zoltan in Vienna,
> another 310 EUR. On the other hand Max prepaid me 1000 EUR. Still this
> means I had to prepay more than 1800 EUR.
> 
> Reimbursing people does not work when we are talking about these kind of
> sums. Purchase orders don't work either, they take way to long and are
> to unreliable, at least here in Germany. Thus we need credit cards.
> 
> 2. We need a legal entity
> 
> But wait, credit cards will not solve our problems either because they
> don't deal with liability. If I book a hotel, I am liable. We need a
> legal entity to share the liability and to minimize the risks for the
> individual contributors.
> 
> Some things cannot be paid with credit cards, they require a bank
> account. A bank account again requires a legal entity.
> 
> And we need the legal entity not only for the expenses but also for
> earnings. I ordered ambassador's polo shirts for more than 850 EUR. Some
> of them are already 'sold' to our contributors, but others will be
> delivered at FUDCon Milan, so it will take a while until I get my money.
> I doubt that Community Architecture can take over the costs because how
> would we pay them in return? Even if Comm Arch could receive payments
> from contributors, could it in another fiscal quarter or even fiscal
> year?
> 
> For this very reason we had the NPO: While my money is to work for me
> and not for Fedora, the funds of the NPO are to enable Fedora
> contributors to spread Fedora in a way that Comm Arch obviously cannot.
> 
> 3. The legal entity must have "Fedora" in it's name
> 
> One of the requirements of the Red Hat Legal dept for continuing the
> Fedora EMEA NPO was that it must change the name to something without
> Fedora. But this doesn't work: When we sponsor the drinks in the project
> area of LinuxTag, we want to make some good PR of it. This means we want
> the poster to say "These drinks are brought to you by the Fedora
> Project" instead of "These drinks are brought to you by yet another
> Linux user group".
> 
> 4. The NPO must be granted the Fedora trademark
> 
> Jared, do you remember when we were sitting at Rheinfelden and
> brainstormed for cool swag like baseball caps, mugs, pins and all that?
> On the same weekend we also closed down the NPO, but we failed to see
> the consequences: All the cool swag we have been thinking of will never
> happen.
> 
> Without an NPO we have to stick with cheap give-aways like buttons or
> stickers because it will be hard to find somebody who can pay for the
> production of expensive things like mugs or baseball caps. That person
> basically has to sponsor the production because without the NPO we
> cannot sell something, thus he never gets his money back.
> 
> And even if we had an NPO to produce and sell stuff, we cannot do Fedora
> swag because this NPO would not be allowed to use the Fedora logo and
> trademark.
> 
> Take a look at other projects, say Debian: They have quite a lot of
> swag: Shirts, caps, ties, mugs, wine, books, ... Sometimes I wonder if
> they still do Linux because they hardly have any media, but all this
> swag helps them to raise money for their project. It's a pity we cannot
> do the same and it is bad for both the Fedora Project and Red Hat.
> 
> I am looking forward to your suggestions how we can overcome this
> problem.
> 
> Regards,
> Christoph
> 

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