Fedora Trademark Guidelines Revised Draft Comments

[Tom Callaway]

On 03/30/2012 02:03 AM, inode0 wrote:
> Can we just say we had a communication failure and move forward? I
> appreciate the substance of your reply today. It is very helpful and
> provides a basis from which to work productively toward a solution.

Agreed. I think part of why we drafted around "Ambassadors-only" was
specifically because we could not identify a better subset of
contributors that should have these permissions. I also suspect strongly
that the very act of being interested in producing non-software Fedora
branded goods for giveaways probably qualifies them to be Ambassadors. ;)

>> > * We need to have a measure of quality control over the vendors that we
>> > use to produce the goods. This simplified down to: We shouldn't be using
>> > vendors who provide a poor quality product or who are otherwise
>> > extremely hostile to deal with. We also can assume that all vendors are
>> > good until proven otherwise. Lastly, we can assume that Ambassadors are
>> > the best people to let us (Red Hat and Fedora) know when a vendor is
>> > "bad" and should not be used. The practical expectation here is that
>> > most (if not all) vendors will never be flagged as "bad", and that will
>> > only be necessary in extreme cases.
> I really have no problem with the above. In fact, we have mostly kept
> track of vendors we have used and we do note vendors we've had
> experiences with that were problematic. That falls into the
> institutional knowledge sort of thing now though as we don't document
> it. We haven't advertised which vendors we don't intend to use again
> in public and that is my only objection to the wiki Good Vendor/Bad
> Vendor section. I don't mind reporting bad vendors to you or to Red
> Hat or to the Fedora Project. Institutional knowledge only goes so far
> and it would be better to document the problems we have with vendors
> and I'm comfortable doing that in a non-public way.

Well, okay. The problem with the "non-public" way is that there is no
good way for other Ambassadors to know when a vendor shouldn't be used,
unless we require all Ambassadors to pre-clear their vendor with the
keeper of the "bad list". If this list was managed on a page where Red
Hat explicitly took responsibility for the content, would that be
acceptable?

>> > * We need to not have a blank check on the sort of items that can be
>> > produced. For example, it would almost certainly be unacceptable for the
>> > Fedora logo to be used on a condom. We can't effectively generate a
>> > blacklist of all of the items that would not be acceptable, so we chose
>> > to generate a whitelist instead. If there are items missing from the
>> > whitelist, please let us know. The fact that the whitelist contains
>> > items that have not been widely produced (or perhaps not at all) is a
>> > reflection of our effort to try to be as extensive as possible.
> The suggestion that we might make condoms with a Fedora Logo on them
> doesn't make me feel trusted. Just as a blacklist can't include every
> preposterous item no whitelist can include every reasonable item. My
> preference would be that you say this group has demonstrated good
> judgment in selecting merchandise types for the past five years and we
> will trust their continued good judgment until such time as they screw
> up. If that can't happen and if the process of adding one is simply
> dropping you note asking you to add "usb sticks" to the list then I'm
> fine with doing that too. How or what is involved in getting a new
> type approved was not specified in the draft beyond getting approval
> from Fedora Legal by following some process that would be linked to
> later so I had no way to know what that process might entail.

I used the condom example specifically for a few reasons:

* Someone actually proposed it at Red Hat a few years ago and went so
far as to generate a mock advertisement.
* I wanted to point out something that the vast majority of sensible
humans would agree is not in the best interest of the Fedora name, but
something that is at least possible that some ambassador somewhere might
someday think is okay.

The process for amending the whitelist should be extremely
straightforward. In fact, it probably makes sense to separate the
whitelist from the TM guidelines. Another goal in the TM guidelines was
to try to keep it as static as possible, and have it refer to separate
pages relating to process or lists that could be dynamic. This is also
why <LINK> appears all over the place. (My previous draft had it all
pulled in, but we agreed that separating the dynamic items makes sense.)

I describe the "add new type to whitelist" process below, but the plan
was to use trac for this to ensure they do not get lost.

Last, but not least, usb keys should definitely be on the whitelist, so
I've already amended the draft for that.

> I'm not really sure how well this will work for me. I'm not against
> trying it but honestly as someone not very inclined to producing my
> own designs I normally show up with an idea and a template from a
> vendor and ask Mo to make it happen for me. I'm not sure I could wade
> through piles of variously formatted designs and be successful finding
> what I would need. Maybe it can be cleverly organized so even I can
> find stuff though.

That same process would still be valid, it would just be considered a
"new design", and at the end of its creation, it would be added to the
list. Mo has been working on a layout where the previously approved
designs are presented visually in a gallery or table setup. Each
pre-approved design would be given a number for quick and easy
identification. Basically, think of it as a catalog of stuff that
ambassadors can look through, then if they see a design they like, they
can click the corresponding link, and it will prompt them to FAS auth.
When they FAS auth, it will check for success and that the user is in
the Ambassador group, then let them download the high quality
preformatted design files to give to the vendor to make it into a
t-shirt or a sticker or whatever.

> If Fedora Community members or Fedora contributors is too broad I
> don't know if I have a suggestion. Even the ambassador group is very
> broad when compared to the small number of ambassadors who have done
> this work. Aside from a different FAS group I don't really have a
> suggestion for capturing the subset of the community who contributes
> in this way.

I don't necessarily have a problem with creating a different FAS group
for this, but everyone involved in this process (me, mo, robyn, pam) all
agreed that we trust the entire Fedora Ambassador group with this
responsibility, so there is no need to limit it further or create some
sort of separate vetting process.

~tom

==
Fedora Project