The Multimedia Question

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 7/20/07, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/20/07, Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Haven't we been trying to get to this for a /long/ time?  A multi-tier
> > branding guideline, Fedora, Based on Fedora, Has a couple Fedora
> > packages in it
> >
> > or something to that effect.
>
> I'm sure we all want it... but i don't personally have a summary of
> all the ideas that have come before and been slapped down by legal.

Replying to myself.  If I lived in a world where my will was
undifferentiated from the rule of law I would decree that a new
category of contribution be created named "Fedora Community Derived"
with accompanied with the necessary textual and iconic marks.

I would decree that these marks be essentially free for every sentient
creature in the known multiverse to use in relation to legally valid
collections of open/free/proprietary software, which make use of
fedora tools or content in its creation.

I would further mandate that a description of the intent of these
marks be writ in the Fedora wiki. Such a description would indicate
that the sole intent of the mark was to allow projects to
self-identify that they users of open technology found inside the
fedora space.  Such a description of intent would also clearly state
that Fedora as a project takes no responsibility for the contents of
the distributions which use the Fedora Community Derived marks.

But since I'm not the recognized ruler of the world...yet, such a
decree would be a little premature.  There's also the nagging problem
that I'm not a trademark expert so I don't know if the creation of
such a mark would fly. It would pretty much be absolutely unenforcible
as a mark in any legal proceedings. But that's not really that
important. What matters is that we'd have to be sure that the creation
of a secondary mark like this would NOT endanger the official Fedora
marks in any way what-so-ever.

Of course if the lawyers preferred, we could probably just have a mark
titled 'Community Derived' and leave Fedora out of the mark
completely. What matters is that WE get to define at the outset the
intent and scope of the mark. It doesn't have to have the word Fedora
in it to mean what we need it to mean. We can mark official Fedora
spins with this additional mark as yet another "community derived"
distribution among many.

So Fedora 8 would be marked as a "community derived" spin as well as
being marked as Fedora. Just as Dell's livecd would be marked as a
'community derived" spin as well as using Dell's marks.  And so on and
so on.  If we timed it correctly, we could have a dozen or so
distributions start using the additional mark at the same time...
adding weight to the purpose of it.

-jef"i have a distinct urge to kick a puppy"spaleta