Hi Eric, sorry, but drawing a distinction between "Hadoop" and "Apache Hadoop" cannot be done, under general trademark usage nor the Apache Trademark Policy. Trademark usage is a specialized language just like a programming language, and that usage violates the intended semantics of the trademark.
--Matt On Jun 15, 2011, at 11:35 PM, Eric Sammer wrote: On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 9:47 PM, Ian Holsman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: so yes .. even a simple patch makes it derived, because it is different. ...and a "dervied work" is fine. Nothing inherently wrong with the term derived. I think the question is can one call it "Hadoop?" Note I'm *not* saying "Apache Hadoop," just "Hadoop" when the derived work is actually derived (to any degree, as Craig R pointed out). Apache Hadoop always and forever means the bits voted on by the PMC - no vendor can claim that - but there does appear to be plenty of prior examples of "reasonable" use of ASF (and other OSS organization) project names in clearly derived works. I do agree there should be a policy and it needs to be universally applied to be fair to all involved. Not to kick up the compatibility dust storm again, but people will always claim crazy stuff that may or may not be true. We should just ignore it. Any day of the week someone is claiming XYZ compatible either explicitly or implicitly (as in client libraries for Foo Project). For cases where a vendor makes a claim that isn't true, users will ask, we'll clarify that Apache makes no guarantees of derived work compatibility and doesn't certify anything (and specifically does the opposite - *NO* guarantees or warranties). Example uses I think should be fine / acceptable: YDH (even though it no longer exists, it's a good example) and Y!'s use of Hadoop Facebook Hadoop Hadoop at eBay Hadoop at LinkedIn IBM's use of Hadoop and yes, CDH* Even if some / all of the above modify at least a single bit (and may *technically* be derived works) everyone understands what they mean. As for the confusion, the OSS community has always just said "oh, they patch some stuff, you should probably ask them" when confronted with vendor modified versions of upstream projects; I've been involved in many of those upstream projects, including a Linux distro (downstream). We should always be polite to downstream users in redirecting them, but I think redirecting them is fine. It's not confusing to users in my experience (we can make it a FAQ or something and just point people there) as RedHat, Novell, Oracle, IBM, and many other vendors have been happily[1] coexisting with their upstream counterparts for a long time. I believe we (the collective Apache Hadoop community including those that redistribute Hadoop bits in various forms) should focus on producing regular, quality releases in a cooperative and constructive environment, and continue to require vendors to provide the proper attribution and license information. This is in everyone's interest, vendors and direct users alike. *Disclosure: I work for Cloudera and I think this should apply to anyone and everyone, including my employer (with whom I obviously do not clear emails. :)) [1] OK, maybe not always "happily" but mostly so. You know what I mean. Thanks to Steve L and others for their hard work on this one. (Sorry for the long email.) -- Eric Sammer twitter: esammer data: www.cloudera.com<http://www.cloudera.com/>
