[FAmSCo] Regarding copyrighted material in your blog and best practices of an ambassador.

[Paul W. Frields]

Hi Mustafa,

----- "Mustafa Qasim" <mustu at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Joerg Simon
> <jsimon at fedoraproject.org>wrote:
> 
> > Am 06.08.2010 09:41, schrieb Mustafa Qasim:
> > > Dear Susmit,
> > >                     The links have been removed. I'll take care of it in
> > > future.
> >
> > Dear Mustafa,
> >
> > we/FAmSCo again, we are sorry to come back to you again, but you posted
> > another Blogpost under the "RHCE BootCamp Banner" -
> >
> > http://blog.mustu.info/rhce-boot-camp/do-you-need-help
> >
> > We do not want to give the impression that Fedora provides the RHCE -
> > this violates our Ambassadors Conduct! You are a Fedora Ambassador and
> > your Blog is aggregated on the Fedora Planet.
> >
> > If you act as an official Fedora Ambassador, we ask you to promote
> > Fedora - and not Red Hat - even if you do it in good intention and we do
> > not know what RH-Legal is thinking about it - you could get in trouble
> > fast, because RED HAT CERTIFIED ENGINEER RHCE is a legal Trademark of
> > Red Hat.
> >
> > cu Joerg
> 
> FAmSCo,
>                I do respect Fedora Project's rules and want to avoid any
> mistakes on my side. I am a bit confused and need to understand the
> following.
> 
>    - A blog author may write posts about his interest and that may vary from
>    Fedora to php, movies, cooking, Cisco, Solaris etc. So,  does Fedora Planet
>    restricts you to aggregating a blog that posts "anything" other then Fedora?
>    I use my blog as my notebook. I do work with local open source communities
>    including Fedora and Ubuntu and posts about both.
>    - How I am violating Redhat's rights by using RHCE word? So, how do I
>    share RHCE lessons with my friends that Redhat's legal persons dont have any
>    objection nor my posts are considered illegal?
>    - Should I exclude my blog from planet if I do also post about Solaris,
>    RHCE, Ubuntu, Movies and PHP?

I can give you a few pointers on this from my perspective.  I'm not on
FAmSCo and I'm also not a lawyer.  But I think I can help you figure
out a way to make your site and your Planet entries more observant of
what the Fedora community and the Ambassadors team expect.

First, it's not clear to me what your "RHCE Boot Camp" blog is
supposed to be.  Is this an online course to train people in the kind
of skills that make for an RHCE?  If so, it's not a good idea to call
it "RHCE Boot Camp."  That title implies that you are offering RHCE
training, which is a violation of Red Hat's trademarks.  Only Red Hat
and its global training partners can offer RHCE training.

Earlier, you had posted Red Hat copyrighted materials for RHCE
training.  I know that you removed them, for which I thank you!  But I
worry that if you are training people in RHCE level skills, and using
those materials to do it, you might be putting yourself in an
uncomfortable position.  The issue is just more visible because you
were advertising such training on the Fedora Planet.  I hope you will
avoid using Red Hat's training materials in violation of their license
and copyright.

The graphic you posted also advertises your work as an "RHCE Boot
Camp," which is confusing.  In addition, the penguin characters are
actually owned by someone else (not Red Hat).  I know a friend created
this graphic for you, but since I know you care not just about
freedom, but also the rights of others, you should look for graphics
that are truly free (as in freedom).  There are plenty of pictures of
penguins, including cartoons, that are freely licensed for use, such
as with a Creative Commons license.  See if your friend can make you a
new graphic, without violating the licensing of other creators.

What Joerg points out, I think, is that together these issues make
your recent posts appear to violate the rights of others, including
Fedora community members such as Red Hat.  I'm sure that's not what
you intended!  So I hope the information above will help you
understand where the specific problems might occur, so you can avoid
them in the future.

There's nothing wrong with posting blogs on the Fedora Planet where
you offer technical advice on how to run various utilities on Fedora
and RHEL.  There's also nothing wrong with talking about your
experience taking an RHCE class.  (Although, as you may know, the
final examination is under a non-disclosure agreement, so you
shouldn't be discussing that.)  Those subjects are all of interest to
people around the Fedora community.

What I recommend to people is that they feed the Planet not with their
entire blog, but with a category or tag feed.  For instance, my blog
is here:

  http://paul.frields.org/

I put all the posts intended for the Fedora Planet in the "Fedora"
category.  So my feed for the Planet is:

  http://paul.frields.org/?cat=3&feed=rss2

Notice the "cat" entry there for category.  Your weblog software, I'm
sure, offers a similar function.  If you're not familiar with it,
check the manuals or online documentation to see how to use this
function.  I would recommend that you categorize posts that you want
on the Planet similarly.  You can do the same for other Planets you
might be on, too!  That way you can feed posts that are relevant to
the Fedora community, or any other community, or many at once if
appropriate.  By the way, we include this tip on our Planet page on
the wiki:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet

I hope this helps, and let us know if you have other questions.

Paul