Hi Harold, Drew, all > Drew Jensen wrote: > > [...] > > > > OpenOffice.org is FOSS - by definition then there is always the option > > for members of the project to fork to another. There is in the end > > nothing the parent project can do about it, short of keeping folks in > > such a mind that they choose not to do so. > > > > If however some segment of the project members do choose to do so, > > there really isn't any way to stop them. > > > > What the parent project can do is control copyrighted materials - the > > branding.
At the moment, they control the name and the logo as well as the graphics created by Oracle employees (icons, gull orb ...) > > > > [...] > > > > The Sun folks in Hamburg and the Oracle staff had to know that if this > > was to be the Oracle plan that it would test the strength of the bonds > > within the OpenOffice.org community. Here I do not mean only those, > > like myself, acting as individuals, but that it would stress the bonds > > with the different commercial vendors and non-profit organizations > > that make up the bulk of the community. These bonds are stressed too much: http://www.documentfoundation.org > > > > The last word, as found in the referenced Community Council minutes > > above, is that some modification to the icons, for UX reason, would > > begin - that this will now include the wider community, but with > > limits. OK, actually that's fair enough. ... depending on the limits. If they define "additional color" as crossing the line, we'll win not very much by spending enormous effort. > > > > I would suppose that given the covers are finally off the new Oracle > > product the time to openly discuss, in detail, the future of the > > current OpenOffice.org code line is also finally here. Icons included.. +1 (or even + 1000) > [...] > > Oracle now owns the OpenOffice.org *software* and its branding. But, > given that ODF is an ISO standard, does Oracle also own it and its > branding? If not, who does? Oracle owns the trademarked name "OpenOffice.org" (on behalf of the community as until this very morning there has not been a Community driven foundation able to deal with legal claims in the past), but it doesn't own the software, that is licensed under LGPL. Branding is different: They own the logo together with the name and probably the gull orb and the icons. We only have (not yet finished) branding guidelines for the logo, but they just implemented their visuals in the product - with or against the wishes, interests and opinions of the volunteer community. I don't know exactly about ODF, but I think, it's owned by OASIS. But as they didn't have a consistent branding in the past (just like us here), Sun/Oracle as OASIS member created the ODF document icons, proposed them to OASIS and included it first in StarOffice (Oracle Office), and later (after protest by several community members) in the next release of OOo. They hoped that other ODF using companies would follow, but didn't get any positive reaction as far as I know. > > If Oracle does own the branding for ODF then why doesn't it see that > poor branding will not be in its best interests and the sooner the > branding is improved the better? Grey-scale icons must be seen as poor > branding, no? Not necessarily: If you want to promote ODF by creating icons with just one colored area, the ODF badge, being the only colored area among many icons,will be recgnized very well. > [...] > > On the narrower point, it should not be beyond the wit of man (though > beyond the wit of this man, pace Neil Armstrong) to build an extension > that would change the icons for ODF files on "your" system. Would such > an extension breach anyone's copyright (or trademark or ...)? If it doesn't use copyrighted material, probably not. > Of course, it wouldn't have to be implemented as an extension. You probably have noticed, that the beta version of LibreOffice, presented by the new founded OOo Community foundation "The Document Foundation" contains the "old" colored OOo3.1 icons: http://www.libreoffice.org Best regards Bernhard --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
