OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Training Certifications and Trademark

[ro...@us.ibm.com]

Ian Lynch <ia...@gmail.com> wrote on 06/02/2011 09:12:10 AM:

> From: Ian Lynch <ia...@gmail.com>
> To: general@incubator.apache.org
> Date: 06/02/2011 09:12 AM
> Subject: Re: OpenOffice and the ASF
> 
> On 2 June 2011 14:04, Greg Stein <gs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > > Should we add ourselfs as commiters?
> >
> > If you would like to contribute here (possibly instead of, or in
> > addition, to your work at TDF), then yes! Please add yourself into the
> > proposal on the wiki.
> >
> 
> I'm not likely to commit code. I run an accredited awarding organisation
> with permission from Oracle to use the OOo name on certificates as part 
of
> the certification project. We have definite interest from training 
companies
> and certification will help in the marketing process and could fund
> developers. So my question is where will we stand if the OOo trademarks 
are
> transferred to Apache?
> 


Hi Ian,

A similar question came up yesterday.  Apache trademark policy is here:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/

IANAL, but I suspect it will be critical whether the use is like:

"OpenOffice Certified Professional"

versus

"Foo Certification for OpenOffice".

In other words, does the certificate imply (or has the likelihood of 
confusing the reader to believe) that the endorsement comes from Apache?

In any case, when Apache OpenOffice becomes an official project, there 
will be people you can contact to review/get approval for use of the 
trademark, within per the policy. But I don't think we can guarantee that 
no adjustments will be needed.

BTW, the committers list on the wiki is not just for C++ programmers.  If 
you think you'll be contributing other project assets, whether in-product 
help, tutorials, test cases, translations, etc., that is all within the 
role of a committer.

Regards,

-Rob

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OpenOffice / OpenOffice.org

[Simon Brouwer <si...@xs4all.nl>]

Hi Robert, all,

I'd like to mention that OpenOffice.org is to be consistently written as 
such, not omitting the .org, because there are various companies around 
the world that have preceding rights to the name "Open Office" or similar.

Best regards,
Simon

Op 2-6-2011 15:27, robert_weir@us.ibm.com schreef:
>
> "OpenOffice Certified Professional"
>
> versus
>
> "Foo Certification for OpenOffice".



-- 
Vriendelijke groet,
Simon Brouwer.

| http://nl.openoffice.org | http://www.opentaal.org |


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Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Training Certifications and Trademark

[Ian Lynch <ia...@gmail.com>]

On 2 June 2011 14:27, <ro...@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Ian Lynch <ia...@gmail.com> wrote on 06/02/2011 09:12:10 AM:
>
> > From: Ian Lynch <ia...@gmail.com>
> > To: general@incubator.apache.org
> > Date: 06/02/2011 09:12 AM
> > Subject: Re: OpenOffice and the ASF
> >
> > On 2 June 2011 14:04, Greg Stein <gs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > > Should we add ourselfs as commiters?
> > >
> > > If you would like to contribute here (possibly instead of, or in
> > > addition, to your work at TDF), then yes! Please add yourself into the
> > > proposal on the wiki.
> > >
> >
> > I'm not likely to commit code. I run an accredited awarding organisation
> > with permission from Oracle to use the OOo name on certificates as part
> of
> > the certification project. We have definite interest from training
> companies
> > and certification will help in the marketing process and could fund
> > developers. So my question is where will we stand if the OOo trademarks
> are
> > transferred to Apache?
> >
>
> Hi Ian,
>
> A similar question came up yesterday.  Apache trademark policy is here:
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/
>
> IANAL, but I suspect it will be critical whether the use is like:
>
> "OpenOffice Certified Professional"
>

These are end user certificates based on the UK National Occupational
Standards and referenced to the European Qualifications Framework. They are
generic in the sense they are certificates in eg Word Processing rather than
Writer but we intended putting the OOo/LO (Could be Apache I suppose) logo
on the certificate to show it was achieved in the context of the specific
product. This keeps compatibility with the national and European systems
which we think is more powerful than a vendor approach. Community
endorsement would be good but not essential.  We will give back a
contribution from the certification fee to the community and of course
certification will help with marketing. Since the quality assurance is
through the UK government regulatory system, it means that the community
does not need to have any special committees for this as long as they are
happy with independent government regulation. (We have an Open Source
independent community rep on our board of governors and our Chairman was
formerly commercial director and a full board member of IBM) We do in fact
have an EU grant application submitted through Germany to support transfer
of innovation to other countries. We also have a sophisticated on-line
system based on Drupal and a LAMP stack for managing evidence provision and
quality assurance agreed with the UK regulators. We can provide user
certification for a wide range of FOSS projects Inkscape, GIMP, etc, it's
just that OOo seems to be the first where there is definite demand.

versus
>
> "Foo Certification for OpenOffice".
>
> In other words, does the certificate imply (or has the likelihood of
> confusing the reader to believe) that the endorsement comes from Apache?
>

As it stands it would be a certificate with an OOo logo on it (And the logos
of the UK national qualifications regulators for England, Wales and NI -
Scotland has a separate education system) We are also endorsed by the UK
Sector Skills Council for Business and IT since they produced the assessment
criteria, we just provide the assessment model. If we take the OOo logo away
it rather defeats the purpose since we are already providing the generic
certification in any case we just don't take any real notice of the product
used and for many people it doesn't matter. The idea was to have a mechanism
for getting resource to the OOo community (or LO, Inkscape, Gimp etc for
that matter) So I'm not sure if using the OOo logo on a certificate goes
beyond nominative use. I'd say I'd err on the side of caution and say it
does.

In any case, when Apache OpenOffice becomes an official project, there
> will be people you can contact to review/get approval for use of the
> trademark, within per the policy. But I don't think we can guarantee that
> no adjustments will be needed.


How long is it likely to take? We have a significant potential customer
wanting to get started in September and it means I have to go to Equador to
train people! I'm not going to go from UK to SA if there is uncertainty
about use of the OOo logo on the certificates.

BTW, the committers list on the wiki is not just for C++ programmers.  If
> you think you'll be contributing other project assets, whether in-product
> help, tutorials, test cases, translations, etc., that is all within the
> role of a committer.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Rob
>
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-- 
Ian

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