Trademark license agreement status

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen<bob at fedoraunity.org> wrote:
> I have been attacked, called names and so on in private because I refuse to sign the original document, as a result I have reacted from a personal point of view.

Unfortunately, I can't do much about inappropriate private comments
that have been directed at you...or inappropriate private comments
directed at anyone.  How much of the heat in the public discussion is
spill over from private communications where a line was crossed and
someone got offended and there weren't others in the conversation to
work on smooth over the discord? I don't know, but I'm guessing its a
majority of it...for everybody who is showing a little fray around the
edges on this issue.  Another reason I personally appreciate the legal
reps willingness to come out on the public list and have a discussion.

I understand that you don't like having the TLA exist at all.  I get
it.  I think we can all agree that legal issues blow monkey chunks.
Legal issues which intersect community interests...even more so.     I
really wish there was a pre-existing copyleft approach to trademark
that still allowed the trademark to be enforcible for a license. But
I'm not aware of such a construction.   As it stands right now we have
to make a choice with regard to keeping the trademark in an
enforceable state.  I think Glezos summed up the underlying issue. Is
protecting the trademark long term worth the intangible short term
cost?  Its a very difficult question.  We seemed to have survived the
introduction of the CLA for contributors even though there was heat
when it was introduced.

-jef