Board/Project Governance

[inode0]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
> HI
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 1:38 PM, inode0  wrote:
>> The Board approves various uses of the trademarks without any
>> involvement of Red Hat legal. And I would cite the one recent case of
>> Red Hat legal making the decision without involving the Board as an
>> example of why the community should be the ones approving the use of
>> trademarks.
>
> Red Hat owns the trademark and the board has no authority to stop Red Hat
> from exercising its rights as the trademark owner.  Unless it is owned by a
> non-profit foundation, this won't change and even then, it is likely the
> arrangement would have to involve giving a very broad license to Red Hat.
> Having said that, if the board wants to provide more transparency and
> involvement in general,  I would suggest doing an yearly or bi yearly report
> of the board activities c.f  GNOME Foundation.

We are all well aware of who owns the trademarks and who can do
whatever they want with them. That doesn't mean the Fedora Project
would not be better served by Red Hat legal and the Fedora Board
working together to better protect the trademarks and to allow their
use in ways consistent with our branding efforts. It is not a
requirement, but it is a good thing.

John