Questions for legal about updating trademark guidelines

[Peter Robinson]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 08:45:48PM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
>> I've thought about this a bit since the meeting and I was wondering whether a
>> process similar to third parties wanting to use the Fedora name in their URL
>> might be appropriate. Its obviously not exact the same but its a similar style
>> of issue. Hosting organisations like amazon (I work for a hosting provider that
>> does cloud stuff and we deal with this) have to do licensing processes for
>> various other OSes so I wouldn't have thought it would be a major problem or
>> change of process for them. Max might be able to comment on that though. We
>> could put some simple guidelines in place that wouldn't have to be repeated for
>> each release so they basically agree not to modify etc and it would protect and
>> enforce the trademark. spot might be able to comment on the process and whether
>> something similar might be an appropriate compromise between the spins process
>> and nothing at all.
>>
> So I see these two things which may be what you're talking about:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Local_community_domains#Pre-purchased_domain
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#Noncommercial_and_community_web_sites
>
> The first link seems to boil down to the Board will use a rapid process to
> verify that the trademark guidelines are being followed and then ask "Can
> the community set up this domain?"  In most cases, it's expected the Board
> will answer "Yes".
>
> The second link could be applied to third parties producing images although
> it would need heavy adaptation.

I never meant that they were suppose to be used straight up but rather
the principle/idea/procedures that is used for domains might apply
equally well as a procedure for approving 3rd party use of core
packages with modified images/config files etc. to ensure they meet
and understand the requirements of using Fedora and its associated
trademarks.

Might be interesting to see if Debian and other distros have policies
regarding this.

Peter