Be excellent - answer questions

Tue May 19 13:04:55 UTC 2009

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 07:42:10AM -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:08:00AM +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > I think an important part of being excellent is to reply to questions,
> > so I'd like to re-send my questions about fedoracommunity.org. I already
> > sent them 10 days ago, but so far nobody has replied.
> 
> Well, some of the answers came as part of the "yet another website"
> thread.

Correct, according to the list I answered back on May 10.

> > 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).
> 
> As I understand it, this was the brainchild of Paul, Mike McGrath, and
> Red Hat's Legal dept. as a way to address the growing numbers of
> domain names being purchased that have 'fedora' in their names.  Per
> the trademark guidelines, each of those domains must agree to the
> 'use in a domain name trademark license'.  Instead, individuals
> wishing to run their own web site with 'Fedora' in the domain name
> could instead request a subdomain of fedoracommunity.org, which does
> not require signing that license.  The trademark guidelines still
> apply of course.  Individuals wouldn't be _required_ to get a
> subdomain in *.fc.org, they can still purchase domains with 'fedora' in
> their names, but then would need to sign the trademark license.
> *.fc.org was seen as a way to lower that burden.

This is all correct.  Our legal counsel felt the particular domain
name "fedoracommunity" was sufficiently clear that the sites are owned
and run by someone other than the Fedora Project.  In other words,
local communities are free to include content as they like, subject
only to the guidelines for use of the Fedora trademarks on the site
(which are minimal, such as not being disparaging to the Fedora
Project).

> The first public disclosure of the purchase of fedoracommunity.org was
> within days of its purchase.  I see it was registered on 2 Feb, the
> Infrastructure team was made aware of it on 4 Feb:
>   https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg00053.html
> and it was noted in a message to f-a-b on 8 Feb in regards to the "EOL
> Security" domain request.
>   https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-February/msg00039.html
> 
> I don't think it was _announced on a mailing list_ per say, but was
> included in the "Local community domains" wiki page (which the Board
> was working to revise to add flexibility) at that time.
>    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Local_community_domains

Correct.  We are offering yet another option to local communities, not
making requirements on them.  No one is forced to use a
fedoracommunity.org domain, it's simply an option for community
members who want to set up sites without what they perceive as the
hassle of a license agreement.  I believe the agreement isn't much of
a hassle, but nevertheless, I wanted to make more options available.

> > Is getting a *.fedoracommunity.org subdomain limited to the group of
> > Fedora contributors or FAS account holders?
> 
> As the Board approves each request, I don't see the Board approving
> such for non-Fedora contributors or people not FAS account holders.
> That seems like quite a low bar.

Agreed.

> > How about content control? In the previous discussions about community
> > websites (on fedora-ambassadors-list back in January) 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?
> 
> I'm going to defer to the legal folks here.

See above.  The content on the fedoracommunity.org sites is controlled
by the communities themselves.  The Fedora Project and Red Hat are not
going to police them, but we do require that people observe the
trademark guidelines.  The guidelines make no distinctions about this
kind of content, only about very simple and well-understood principles
like not substantially altering the Fedora logo or being disparaging
toward the Project or the community.

> > 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?
> 
> If the site's only purpose is to criticize (as opposed to engage in
> reasonable discussion), then I doubt that would be in the Project's
> best interest to let such be set up on *.fedoracommunity.org.  But if
> people engage in healthy (and polite) debate about aspects of the
> Project as part of wider discussions, I consider that to be a good
> thing.

Correct, see above again.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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