Trademark license agreement status

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 08:41:36PM +0300, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Jeff Spaleta<jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen<bob at fedoraunity.org> wrote:
> >> I have been attacked, called names and so on in private because I refuse to sign the original document, as a result I have reacted from a personal point of view.
> >
> > [...]
> > I understand that you don't like having the TLA exist at all.  I get
> > it.  I think we can all agree that legal issues blow monkey chunks.
> > Legal issues which intersect community interests...even more so.     I
> > really wish there was a pre-existing copyleft approach to trademark
> > that still allowed the trademark to be enforcible for a license. But
> > I'm not aware of such a construction.   As it stands right now we have
> > to make a choice with regard to keeping the trademark in an
> > enforceable state.  I think Glezos summed up the underlying issue. Is
> > protecting the trademark long term worth the intangible short term
> > cost?  Its a very difficult question.  We seemed to have survived the
> > introduction of the CLA for contributors even though there was heat
> > when it was introduced.
> 
> It seems kinda complex to discuss complex issues over the net. This is
> even worse if some things are either already in stone, or kinda
> pre-decided.
> 
> We're doing all these awesome conferences and activity days every now
> and then. Maybe we should schedule a few hours to discuss high-level
> Board-like policy-"umph!" issues. So, besides of just running a "Where
> are we and where are we going?" session, we'll also allow the board to
> answer tough questions from the community (eg. through something like
> [1]). I'd settle for a Board Summit once every a couple of years.

We do have a Board meeting scheduled at the FUDCon coming up in
Toronto, although I understand we may not all be able to meet face to
face there.  We should be able to teleconference in anyone who can't
be physically there.  We can use that time for in-person Q&A, and/or
schedule additional time to meet in whatever capacity the Board thinks
is best.

One of the advantages of having the FAB list is that no one has to
wait for such an event.  Anyone's free to bring up issues and tough
questions on this list for the Board to address.  Sometimes we have to
do proper research to figure out the right answers, and one of the
tradeoffs of an in-person Q&A is that we might not be able to get the
right answer on the spot.  However, both types of meetings are good
things to have.

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