Proposal for new trademark approval policy

[David Nalley]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> While I do think this proposal is a step into the right direction, I
> still have some questions and concerns.
>
> Dienstag, den 12.04.2011, 11:11 -0600 schrieb Stephen John Smoogen:
>> 0) The Board will appoint SIG's that they think are appropriate for
>> various trademark approvals.
>
> Only once or per-spin?
>
>> 1) Each appointed SIG should create a checklist or SOP for Item approval
>
> What does "Item" mean in this context? Is it the spin or the trademark?
>
>> 2) When an appointed SIG gives its approval for a Item, it should do
>> so in a public and transparent manner. The SIG can decide the exact
>> manner of approval but who and where the approval is granted should be
>> specified in the SOP.
>
> Would the current spins process meet this description?
>
>> 3) Once approvals from appointed SIGS are done, the Item will be
>> submitted to the Board (via a ticket) for trademark approval.
>
> As far as I understood the current process, this is step one. Before we
> request trademark approval from the board, the spin was already ratified
> by the spins SIG, the design team already approved the artwork and so
> on.
>
> And isn't using the ticket system a bit overkill? Say we have 20 items
> to check by 10 different SIGs, this means we have 20 tickets, right?
> With the current privacy level of the board's trac, we cannot have a
> ticket where all SIGs comment on.
>
>> 4) The Board can appoint a specific SIG to keep track of "trademarked"
>> Items and that SIG will set schedules and/or reasons for re-approval
>
> Spins are already approved per release only and need re-approval.
>
>> 5) The Board will be the final arbitrator in disputes between various
>> SIGs or perceived problems of process.
>
> +1
>
> As I said this proposal is a step into the right direction, however I'm
> afraid it duplicates processes and governance that is already handled on
> a SIG level. I'm a big fan of the KISS principle.
>
> SIGs cannot approve the trademark usage, they can only approve what is
> in their scope and then give green light. Once there is positive
> feedback from all parties it is on the board to grant the trademark
> usage. This is what has worked fine in the past until it suddenly and or
> no apparent reason became very complicated on the board level.


Forgive me for disagreeing with you on this point. The current spins
process is broken, IMO. It has within recent memory churned out spins
without working networking, without a working file manager, etc.

Some of this brokenness, as you've indicated in the past, is a
communication problem as the spins end up touching a number of
different groups within Fedora. Those spins also represent Fedora to a
significant portion of the userbase.

I think the initial response from end of last year and beginning of
this year was at least in part a reaction to the fact that things were
broken. (and I personally think the reaction went a bit too far)

The goal (I think, and I should note I am speaking only for myself) is
to have the groups that will be responsible for deliverables/working
with the spin, be part of this process instead of front loading
spin/trademark approval based on only a kickstart. So I fully expect
that for a normal .ks file, rel-eng, for instance, would have precious
little input, but with an EC2 image for instance they might need to
spend a good chunk of time figuring out how they are going to generate
the images and deliver them.

I won't say that this particular plan is without concern. There is
obviously concern of overloading individual groups with work, and also
 with work getting dropped. (At least that is one of my concerns).

The big benefit I personally see from this, is that it gets the board
out of the 'QA/Design/Rel-eng/Spins' business. It means we aren't
prescribing a QA checklist that might not even apply to a given spin,
and instead results in the people who actually do the work in those
groups making the decisions about how things need to happen. You'll
notice there's no 'minimum standard' that has been prescribed, except
that we want a common level of transparency (e.g. tickets in that
groups trac instance.) And I personally see all of this process being
driven by the Spins SIG/Spins Wrangler, with the Board just being
another group that signoff (trademark in this instance) is needed
from.

--David