Red Hat Comments on License Agreement

[Yaakov Nemoy]

Thanks, Pamela, for all the comments. I've been watching this thread
and this does clear up alot of questions. Let me just make some
philosophical points.

2009/8/28 Pamela Chestek <pchestek at redhat.com>:
<snip>
> There was one very good comment that both sides expect to gain from entering
> into a contract. That's true and I hope is the case here. The principle
> purpose of the license is to allow widespread use of the Fedora trademarks,
> but making sure it is done consistently and always with a clear reference to
> the Fedora Project. Consistent use is critical to building a strong,
> recognizable trademark, which in turn increases the visibility of the Fedora
> Project and the community. I hope everyone agrees that this is a valuable
> benefit to everyone.
>
> There's another critical benefit to the community. An unlicensed use is an
> infringement (assuming it's not a fair use). If the Fedora Project tolerates
> some infringements, even “friendly” ones, the day will someday come when it
> could not take any action against a harmful, confusing use and the
> community's unique identity will fade away. If instead the Fedora community
> makes sure that the appropriate licenses are in place, the identity that we
> share collectively remains strong and vibrant for all our benefit.
>
> I welcome your comments.

In simple words, the benefit is more central control of the Trademark
in order to strengthen the identity of the community, under this
trademark. With little comment on where i stand on the issue, there
are many people who don't always see eye to eye on this sort of issue.
They prefer the anarchy that comes with a decentralized control over
the trademark, because it's not important to be centrally organized.
Some people aren't always necessarily fans of centralized
organizations, and there are a number of reasons why.

I'm going to skip over the arguments why one way or another is bad or
good. Since Fedora does consist of a very international and diverse
community, sufficed to say, there are a number of people in the
community who do think this way. Your points do clarify where RH is
going with this, and how it benefits the community, but i can imagine
from some point of views, these comments are just going to make it
worse in their eyes. And no, i don't have an answer that's going to
satisfy any of them, because that would just be sugar coating it.

I can't answer which works better, centralized organisation or
decentralized. I think i would need a few more university degrees to
even begin answering it. Still, i want to point out the that the
community is not the trademark. The community is a community, no
matter how we organize ourselves. From a practical standpoint, the
trademark is the property of Red Hat and is a gift to the community
along with the manpower that Red Hat also contributes via people
working on Fedora part or full time. Everyone here contributes to the
community, even if it's just posting to f-devel. (Personally, every
time i feel like posting something there that isn't 100% technical, i
save money to buy someone a beer.) The trademark, in my eyes is part
of RH's contribution.

But we all know what happens to that one kid who takes his ball home early ;)

-Yaakov "i contribute to free and open source software by buying beer" Nemoy