Fedora Trademark Guidelines Revised Draft Comments

[Tom Callaway]

On 03/29/2012 01:08 PM, inode0 wrote:

> My feathers are admittedly ruffled because I find it absurd that the
> work that we have done for years is resulting in our being singled out
> as a group that needs to be micro-managed by Fedora Legal. I'm sure
> that isn't the perspective of Fedora Legal, at least I hope it isn't.
> But I have not been given any reasonable justification for treating
> Ambassadors this way and no one else.

Sometimes I'm rather stunned at how people jump to the conclusion that
they're being singled out as victims.

In this case, the opposite is true. The intention is that Fedora
Ambassadors are especially entrusted to produce branded non-software
goods. Red Hat is not willing or able to say "anyone can produce branded
non-software goods", because that is what is known as "naked licensing",
and that adversely affects Red Hat's capacity to retain and defend the
trademark. Red Hat also must maintain quality control and "adequate
supervision" of the production of the branded non-software goods.

I spent a lot of time working with Pam (in Red Hat Legal) to simplify
the requirements that must be met, and they boiled down to these three:

* We need to have a measure of quality control over the vendors that we
use to produce the goods. This simplified down to: We shouldn't be using
vendors who provide a poor quality product or who are otherwise
extremely hostile to deal with. We also can assume that all vendors are
good until proven otherwise. Lastly, we can assume that Ambassadors are
the best people to let us (Red Hat and Fedora) know when a vendor is
"bad" and should not be used. The practical expectation here is that
most (if not all) vendors will never be flagged as "bad", and that will
only be necessary in extreme cases.

* We need to not have a blank check on the sort of items that can be
produced. For example, it would almost certainly be unacceptable for the
Fedora logo to be used on a condom. We can't effectively generate a
blacklist of all of the items that would not be acceptable, so we chose
to generate a whitelist instead. If there are items missing from the
whitelist, please let us know. The fact that the whitelist contains
items that have not been widely produced (or perhaps not at all) is a
reflection of our effort to try to be as extensive as possible.

* We need to have some method to ensure that the logo is used in a way
that is in compliance with the trademark and logo guidelines. We talked
about a lot of ways to do this, and we decided to try to go with the
following logic:

We generate a list of all of the designs that have been used in existing
branded non-software goods and provide those designs in an easy to parse
page, which contains those designs in as many different formats as
possible (sticker, shirt, hat, balloon, etc). Everything on this list is
known to be okay and Ambassadors can simply use those designs on
acceptable types of goods as they need to.

Ambassadors will be able to authenticate through FAS and get special
access to download high-quality, pre-formatted files for the designs on
this list.

Any current designs which don't meet the trademark/logo guidelines will
be cleaned up so that they do meet the guidelines and added to this list.

We've already reached out to the Ambassadors to try to generate this
list, and we've been working with Mo and Fedora Design to try to make it
as comprehensive as possible.

If an Ambassador wants to make a new design, it just needs to be quickly
reviewed for compliance with the Trademark/Logo guidelines (should never
take more than 2 business days). The people doing this review will be
the same people who currently process the logo queue (Ian, Mo, me). All
approved designs will be added to the list and can be used by
Ambassadors without needing to seek additional approval.

The same process also holds for new types of goods. The Fedora Board
tasked the responsibility of reviewing approved types of goods to Fedora
Legal. Should never take more than 2 business days for Fedora Legal to
determine acceptability of goods, and in all cases, the Board will be
notified of approvals/rejections of new types, in case it disagrees.

******

So there you have it. I hope this makes it clear, but if you (or anyone)
has a different model which meets the above minimum criteria, we are
open to considering it.

Also, if there is a different subset of Fedora Community members that we
should be trusting with this responsibility, please suggest that as
well. Keep in mind that the answer cannot be "everyone".

Thanks,

~tom

==
Fedora Project