Yet another website? (Re: [Ambassadors] belux ambassadors meeting log 15th April 2009)

[Christoph Wickert]

First of all thanks for your answer, Paul.

I won't go into details, because most things sound convincing and IANAL.
But there are some things that are still not clear to me.

Am Freitag, den 08.05.2009, 19:37 -0400 schrieb Paul W. Frields:
> On Fri, May 08, 2009 at 08:30:46PM +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>
> > So, a valuable community member (no, not me) who already spends a lot of
> > time and money on Fedora even needs to pay for a lawyer? Even the lawyer
> > will advise you not to sign anything but to get a certified translation
> > first. People are waiting for that translation for months now.
> 
> Not at all -- in fact, I continue to be available to answer specific
> questions about the language or the import of any part of the
> agreement.  I've done this already for several people, and would be
> happy to continue to do so.

OK, let's take the question from my previous mail: Why are
rules for community members stricter than for Red Hat or the Fedora
Project? Or, to be more specific: How can community websites violate the
trademark agreement by only mirroring fedoraproject.org?

According to the trademark agreement community websites must label
"Fedora" as trademarks, at least their first appearance on each page.
Also each page needs a link to the fpo start page named "Fedora
Project," "Official Fedora Project web site," or "Visit the official
Fedora Project web site. We are not doing this at fpo ether, so it's
impossible to mirror fpo to something outside of Fedora infrastructure.

To fix this we need to fix the trademark agreement (unlikely) or fpo
websites first (unlikely too). This is not only a technical requirement
but also a moral commitment: We cannot expect the community to follow
rules that the project does not honor itself.

> Translations are, unfortunately, a non-trivial problem, because as the
> agreement states, the original English version is the canonical text.
> It is written in a specific way to conform to a long history of case
> law (beyond just Red Hat, of course).  In translation, it is possible
> -- even when a translation is done by an attorney -- to introduce
> inconsistencies and confusion.  And in that event, any advice received
> about the translation could be affected.
> 
> There is only one person that I know of waiting for a translation, and
> as I informed him, I do not believe Red Hat is going to undertake the
> cost for that translation and certification.  

If you are talking about Robert: He is waiting for a translation for
months and currently he has no other option as to close down fedora.de.
So even if all this was done for the best and with good intentions, the
outcome is a loss for all parties: Fedora, Red Hat and Robert.

> I suppose it would be
> possible for the Fedora Project to pay for that, but how many
> languages would we need to do this for?  All of them?  And what would
> we then have to cut from our spending to pay for such a translation?

I'm afraid we need translations. Not sure if we need all of them, but if
someone requests one, he needs to be able to get it (in time).

And why do we need to cut that from our (=Fedoras) spending? Red Hat is
the trademark owner, it's in their interest, so IMHO they should pay.

> I think if there are concrete questions about the intent or meaning of
> anything in the agreement, we can freely discuss it here.  Most of the
> language is fairly standard and, as I've explained to everyone who has
> requested or received it, is not designed to trick or damage anyone.
> The agreement represents a fair way of both:

Sorry to interrupt you here, but I think we all agree that setting the
pattern for the community more strict than for the project itself is not
fair.

But now to something different. I didn't want to focus on all this
judicial stuff, instead I'd like to know more about the idea behind and
the history of fedoracommunity.org. Who's idea was this? When was it
discussed in public? If it was not discussed, was it at least announced?
I just searched 65.000 Fedora related mails and could not find anything
related (except this discussion of course). 

Is getting a *.fedoracomminity.org subdomain limited to the group of
Fedora contributors or FAS account holders?

How about content control? In the previous discussions about community
websites the question emerged if we were allowed to link to rpmfusion or
even livna. Can someone publish a "How to watch copy-protected DVDs with
Fedora" article or similar on fedoracommunity.org or any other
community website?

Are we allowed to speak freely on these sites? According to the
trademark guidelines Red Hat gives licenses "solely in connection with
the promotion of the Fedora Project." When someone criticizes a decision
or recent development in Fedora, this surely is not promotion any
longer. Can Red Hat revoke the license because of that?

As you see: There are still lots of open questions. Not necessarily
about the trademark guidelines themselves but about community websites
and how they are affected by the guidelines.

Regards,
Christoph