RFC: Subversion trademark policy

[Karl Fogel <kf...@red-bean.com>]

As Subversion grows more and more popular, the likelihood of people
using its name and logo in confusing ways (even accidentally) grows
too.  There have already been a few instances of this happening,
though so far all easily correctable.  But an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure, so we've written a draft trademark policy:

   http://subversion.org/legal/trademark-policy.html

...and we welcome comments.  It's as brief as we can make it; we're
trying to keep the policy simple and comprehensible.

A plea: while we really do welcome comments on the trademark policy,
please only comment with serious concerns, not with speculative
opinions or contrived legal edge cases.  We'd like to finalize the
policy as soon as we can, which means keeping the discussion
efficient.  You've all been around the Internet, you know what I'm
talking about :-) (else see http://green.bikeshed.com/).  It may well
be that the current draft is sufficient, in which case we'll just take
off the "DRAFT" label and be done.

You might be wondering: who is "we"?

"We" is the Subversion Corporation (subversion.org), a very
lightweight non-profit whose members are all the Subversion full
committers.  We've produced this trademark policy to protect the
public, by ensuring that Subversion's identity is not diluted or
confused by anyone else.

The Subversion Corporation got legal help from CollabNet (in setting
up the organization, and in registering the trademarks on our behalf),
and from the Software Freedom Law Center (see softwarefreedom.org).
Our thanks to them both.

-Karl Fogel

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Re: RFC: Subversion trademark policy

[Stefan Langer <ma...@googlemail.com>]

Karl Fogel schrieb:
> As Subversion grows more and more popular, the likelihood of people
> using its name and logo in confusing ways (even accidentally) grows
> too.  There have already been a few instances of this happening,
> though so far all easily correctable.  But an ounce of prevention is
> worth a pound of cure, so we've written a draft trademark policy:
>
>    http://subversion.org/legal/trademark-policy.html
>
> ...and we welcome comments.  It's as brief as we can make it; we're
> trying to keep the policy simple and comprehensible.
Not sure if this is the correct way to comment but there is no note 
where to send comments to so I just replied to the lists. (Maybe put a 
note where to comment in the draft text)

I have a slight irritation when reading 3c) I understand that you are 
not allowed to refer to a fork or somesort of extension (like for e.g. 
SVK) as a successor of subversion but the example you are giving 
confuses me. The example does not designate a successor but simply 
states the fact that the software is kind of like a Subversion 2.0. This 
does not mean that it claims to be the designated successor. It might be 
better to leaf off the example in order not to confuse anybody or state 
a different example.

Regards
Stefan

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Re: RFC: Subversion trademark policy

[Stefan Langer <ma...@googlemail.com>]

Karl Fogel schrieb:
> As Subversion grows more and more popular, the likelihood of people
> using its name and logo in confusing ways (even accidentally) grows
> too.  There have already been a few instances of this happening,
> though so far all easily correctable.  But an ounce of prevention is
> worth a pound of cure, so we've written a draft trademark policy:
>
>    http://subversion.org/legal/trademark-policy.html
>
> ...and we welcome comments.  It's as brief as we can make it; we're
> trying to keep the policy simple and comprehensible.
Not sure if this is the correct way to comment but there is no note 
where to send comments to so I just replied to the lists. (Maybe put a 
note where to comment in the draft text)

I have a slight irritation when reading 3c) I understand that you are 
not allowed to refer to a fork or somesort of extension (like for e.g. 
SVK) as a successor of subversion but the example you are giving 
confuses me. The example does not designate a successor but simply 
states the fact that the software is kind of like a Subversion 2.0. This 
does not mean that it claims to be the designated successor. It might be 
better to leaf off the example in order not to confuse anybody or state 
a different example.

Regards
Stefan

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