Fedora derivatives branding discussion

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 21:31 +0100, Andre Nogueira wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think people are mixing several things, hence the confusion...
> 
> When talking about a "Fedora-based distro", there are actual three
> possible things:
> 
> 1) A distro which uses ONLY packages which are in Fedora's repository
> (including Extras)
> 
> 2) A distro which uses packages which are NOT in Fedora's repositories
> (not even Extras), but all the packages it uses are free (as in
> speech).
> 
> 3) Same as 2), but uses proprietary packages (Macromedia Flash,
> Acrobat Reader, MP3 codec, etc).
> 
> I believe everyone agrees that 1) is a Fedora-based distro, and that
> 3) could never be accepted because it uses proprietary software.
> As such, we only have to discuss 2).
> 
I don't agree::
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=based
  based
  adj 1: being derived from (usually followed by `on' or `upon'); "a
  film based on a best-selling novel"

So in this sense, all of your examples are "based on Fedora".

It seems that Jesse's clarifications are what's important here.  Any
distribution can say it is "based on Fedora" in its documentation,
website, etc.  They are restricted in their ability to use the Fedora
Logos as part of their logo and Fedora *in their name*.

As far as I can see, Max's proposal is how to relax these restrictions
for distributions which consist entirely of Fedora Software (currently
FC + FE; your #1 above)

Keeping this in mind, I think "based on Fedora" is a point of confusion
to those who would want to use "Based on Fedora" as part of their distro
which contain packages from outside FC + FE.

"Fedora KDExcellent" is a very close association with Fedora.  It would
be neat if projects similar to KUbuntu or EdUbuntu grew up in this
namespace.  The question would be, do you let this happen by giving
everyone the ability to spin their one-off distributions as "Fedora Foo"
and seeing which ones flourish?  Or do you wait for one to flourish and
then see if the project would like to be officially blessed with the
"Fedora" cognomen?  (Personally, I don't see this second approach
working.  Imagine that CentOS were based on Fedora instead of RHEL.  Do
you think they'd change their name to Fedora CentOS if we said that
they'd proven their worth and we'd like to let them use it?)

 "KDExcellent, a Fedora Distribution" is a safe middle ground.  It's a
much closer association than "based on Fedora".  But it implies that
there are many separate Fedora Distributions and this one is no more
canonical than them.  It also puts "Fedora Core" on a separate level
from these distributions.

Personally I'd like to see the "Fedora KDExcellent" form.  This puts
people who want to form separate groupings of packages on an equal
footing name-wise with "Fedora Core" which is a good thing for the
community.  "Fedora Foo Linux" is a name.  "Foo, a Fedora Distribution"
is a name and a description.  It's much easier for a distribution to
drop a description than to change a name if they are weighing the costs
of being lazy and rush packaging their own versions of packages rather
than getting them into Fedora Extras or working to maintain/fix the
Fedora packages for everyone.

-Toshio
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