[Fedora-spins] Of test spins and trademarks

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 07/16/2009 04:33 AM, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 04:05 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> This can be tricky to actually convey. Let's say, I do a rawhide
>> snapshot of the Fedora Live CD for QA. Someone else takes my snapshot
>> and redistributes it to some other users who aren't aware that it isn't
>> a finished product.
> 
> I don't think you can prevent what others do with your offering.  

In that case, the purpose of why it was offered in the first place
cannot be used as a meaningful differentiator on granting branding
rights since the purpose will be lost between intermediates engaging in
redistribution.

We
> haven't worried about this in the past, why are we worrying about it
> now?  Are we purposefully trying to find all the hard to answer
> questions?

These are hard questions, yes but it is necessary to answer them. Few
reasons why. I have noticed a number of use cases that don't seem to be
covered well within the current guidelines and none of these have been
rebranded and hence strictly speaking  trademark violations and I want
the guidelines to cover them:

* QA team has started test days actively with associated rawhide snapshots

* Adam Jackson IIRC posted a rawhide snapshot of the Fedora desktop live cd

* Adam Miller recently posted a rawhide snapshot of the Xfce Live CD

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-July/msg00251.html

* Others are interested in or already posting daily snapshots.

I am interested in knowing for example, whether I can take the Xfce ks
in spin-kickstarts, include the updates repo, create a  new live cd and
still call it Fedora Xfce Spin. Kevin Fenzi is ok with that but I would
want to hear other opinions and incorporate consensus into the trademark
guidelines to cover all of these explicitly and unambiguously in a way
that makes all this possible while avoiding brand dilution. The solution
might just be to advocate rebranding in these cases. I am interesting in
hearing everyone's thoughts on this.

Rahul