Yet another website? (Re: [Ambassadors] belux ambassadors meeting log 15th April 2009)

[Robert Scheck]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Let's face it: ATM the changes have caused confusion and discomfort in
> the Fedora community. For example fedora.de has been taken offline
> because of discrepancies between the trademark holder and the domain
> owner. Robert as the domain owner is a well known and valuable
> contributor of the project and all AFAIK all he did was redirecting to
> fedoraproject.org.

Well, that's more or less correct. I'm the owner of fedora.de since 2005.
Before November 2007, the domain was just redirecting to fedoraproject.org.
Once static fedoraproject.org sites came up and got translatable, I did
this and served a copy of the German static fedoraproject.org sites via the
domain fedora.de - I asked the webteam for the "OK", but yes, they are no
laywers, too. The pages are slightly modified to technically run on another
host and point out that it's just a copy/mirror at the contact page. And
they're using German URLs, /mithelfen/ rather /join/ to make things better
to remember for German users.

In March 2009, I got a very long e-mail by Paul together with a trademark
agreement, which is is written in legalese-english. It's a contract, that
can be terminated by both sides without any reason and if terminated, the
domain in subject has to be transfered to Red Hat. There are lots and lots
of paragraphs extending that, and how to use, not being disrespectful etc.
But there are also paragraphs, that say, that I've to use TM, (c) and (r)
after the first important usage of Fedora and so on. All that are things,
the current static pages of fedoraproject.org violates against. Fedora is
violating, I have to fix such stuff when serving a slightly modified copy
of the pages - a typical broken thing from legal. Another paragraph e.g. is
forcing me to put "Official Fedora Project page" link into footer and/or
header of each page (note, that translating that string is not allowed). I
was pointing out in the past at the contact page that fedora.de is a copy/
mirror and not more, but modifying stuff all the time is inacceptable and
indiscutable for me. A single page pointing that out is much enough.

As I didn't sign the agreement until now, from the legal perspective, it is
safest to take the whole page/site offline, once such a possible trademark
violation gets pointed out (according to Paul, the old trademark guidelines
forbidd the Fedora logo usage outside of Fedora). Paul luckily understood
my situation and is working together with Red Hat Legal in order to solve
this issue hopefully. This is now more than one month ago and as far as I
know, Paul is currently on vacation until next week or so.

Note that all my cognitions and knowledge about the agreement, I'm forced
to sign by Red Hat Legal with a deadline, is just from my understanding of
the legalese-english document. So I maybe misunderstood things, but I am
also still waiting since more than one month for a German understandable
translation.

Main indention of such a trademark agreement is, that if I tomorrow get a
<insert another distribution> user, fedora.de not redirects to them or that
I sell the domain away and it is used for other things. Red Hat tries even
here to protect the domains and (obviously) doesn't want to take the domain
for their own usage, but the agreement is written the wrong way - at least
from my point of view. If a Fedora-related domain gets known to people to
be Fedora-related (such as me), that is a "status" that should be kept now
and in the future, according how I have understood Paul; but not mentioned
that way in the agreement (at least I was not able to read it there).

Fazit: If you ever register a domain name that uses the trademark name of
Fedora inside and make it Fedora Project related, Red Hat Legal forces you
to sign that agreement - independent, whether it's a redirect domain or
really content such as a community or just mirroring some Fedora stuff...

As long as I don't appy and I'm not able to fully understand the trademark
agreement, Red Hat Legal wants me to sign, the domains fedora.de and
fedora.tel (yes, I am owning that one as well) will stay disabled and/or
get not in touch with the Fedora Project. Each day, about 1000 of direct
requests to fedora.de will end at a dummy page (& ~ 10000 direct requests
per day to fedora.de around and especially after Fedora releases)...

I'm really pissed, but still hope that Paul comes up with something soon.


Greetings,
  Robert