Refining the Freemarker product description to follow trademark best practices

[Jacopo Cappellato <ja...@gmail.com>]

With reference to [*], that describes the best practices for trademarks
applied to project and product descriptions, and specifically to the
guideline:

Project and product names should always be referred to in a consistent
> casing and used as an adjective, and never as a noun or verb, like any
> trademark should be used


I propose that we slightly change the first sentence in our website from:

Apache FreeMarker is a template engine: a Java library to generate text
> output (HTML web pages, e-mails, configuration files, source code, etc.)
> based on templates and changing data.


to the new description:

The Apache FreeMarker template engine is a Java library to generate text
> output (HTML web pages, e-mails, configuration files, source code, etc.)
> based on templates and changing data.


Additionally, we should add the same description at the top of the
Freemarker download page, according to what is stated in the following
paragraph from the same reference [*]:

Every product homepage and any overview download pages for the product must
> include a prominent reference to the product as "Apache Foo", and must
> include a brief one sentence description of the function of the software
> product itself


What do you think? If there are no objections or better ideas I will submit
a pull request.

Kind regards,

Jacopo

[*] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs#naming

Re: Refining the Freemarker product description to follow trademark best practices

[Jacopo Cappellato <ja...@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 1:58 PM, Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu> wrote:

>
> Huh? It's software. There are no FreeMarker cars and FreeMarker
> motorcycles and FreeMarker trucks ... FreeMarker is the product
> itself. It's not like BMW, it's like BMW i3, where BMW is Apache in
> our case. We use *that* as an adjective: Apache FreeMarker.
>

Well, actually both "Apache FreeMarker" and "FreeMarker" are trademarks of
the Apache Software Foundation; and we apply them to the project and our
product (the template engine).


> The rewording is quote convoluted in our case (since the rest of the
> sentence basically tells what a template engine is). But let's not
> waste time with it, I say. I would wait and see if they actually pick
> on this (I couldn't believe it...).


I am sure that no one will complain about this little detail; as you have
mentioned several other projects are doing something similar (including
OFBiz!): there is still not much awareness about how to treat trademarks.
This is just a small detail I have noticed but there is no need to take
action now if this community likes the current definition.

>
> This one at least doesn't hurt (much), so let's do it, and thanks for
> noticing.
>
>
Cheers,

Jacopo

Re: Refining the Freemarker product description to follow trademark best practices

[Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu>]

Thursday, January 12, 2017, 1:00:23 PM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

> With reference to [*], that describes the best practices for trademarks
> applied to project and product descriptions, and specifically to the
> guideline:
>
>> Project and product names should always be referred to in a consistent
>> casing and used as an adjective, and never as a noun or verb, like any
>> trademark should be used

Huh? It's software. There are no FreeMarker cars and FreeMarker
motorcycles and FreeMarker trucks ... FreeMarker is the product
itself. It's not like BMW, it's like BMW i3, where BMW is Apache in
our case. We use *that* as an adjective: Apache FreeMarker.

> I propose that we slightly change the first sentence in our website from:
>
> Apache FreeMarker is a template engine: a Java library to generate text
>> output (HTML web pages, e-mails, configuration files, source code, etc.)
>> based on templates and changing data.
>
>
> to the new description:
>
> The Apache FreeMarker template engine is a Java library to generate text
>> output (HTML web pages, e-mails, configuration files, source code, etc.)
>> based on templates and changing data.

The rewording is quote convoluted in our case (since the rest of the
sentence basically tells what a template engine is). But let's not
waste time with it, I say. I would wait and see if they actually pick
on this (I couldn't believe it...). "<trademark> is a <something>" is
perhaps the most common way of introducing software products, and it's
also used at the ASF: "Velocity is a Java-based template engine.",
"Apache Groovy is a powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language".

> Additionally, we should add the same description at the top of the
> Freemarker download page, according to what is stated in the following
> paragraph from the same reference [*]:
>
>> Every product homepage and any overview download pages for the product must
>> include a prominent reference to the product as "Apache Foo", and must
>> include a brief one sentence description of the function of the software
>> product itself

This one at least doesn't hurt (much), so let's do it, and thanks for
noticing.

> What do you think? If there are no objections or better ideas I will submit
> a pull request.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Jacopo
>
> [*] http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs#naming

-- 
Thanks,
 Daniel Dekany