Apologies for the late reply; I'm not on the list. I do have a few general suggestions/pointers about Apache policy. It's great to see the frank and productive thread discussing how the PPMC wants to address the branding and "what code goes where" issues here; that's a healthy sign.
- In general, trademarks only really work when one organization is using the name for their specific software product(s). Thus, it's not appropriate for some other group of people to be working on and promoting some "Fluo-Foobar" software elsewhere, if the podling is hoping to become Apache Fluo the top level project. That's because users won't clearly understand the difference between *who* is providing Fluo-Foobar versus providing Apache Fluo. Trademark law is specifically meant to ensure that when users learn about a name, they know who is providing a product. It prevents you from someone serving a Pepsi to you when you ask for Coke, for example. Branding issues are not something that have to be solved immediately during the early incubation phase; it takes time to both have the community decide what you want to do, as well as do the work to update names. I see from this thread and on the Incubator list the PPMC is discussing this and moving in the right direction, which is great, so I'm not concerned here. Long term, Apache TLP projects are expected to meet some minimum website display standards, and to act in an independent manner. That's why we have the incubation process - so there's ample time for the community to move your work to the Apache Way. The policies are here: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/responsibility - Personally I would recommend keeping the fluo.io domain, transferring it to the ASF, and asking infra to renew it for another year. Long term it will need to be a simple redirect to the proper fluo.apache.org website, but if you have lots of pre-existing links, it's fine to keep the name so they still work (but redirect to fluo.a.o). - In terms of what software goes where, that's up for the individuals maintaining these different bits to decide (and decide if they want to donate to the podling, or keep building them externally as separate software products). The key point is ensuring that the project only checks in code under an allowable permissive license, and that the project is planning on using it for releases (or testing, docs, whatever). Thanks, - Shane
