Thank you, Dean. I think your underlying concern is that CloudBees and Jenkins are "inextricably linked" because of CB's deep involvement in the project, or to put more bluntly, a concern that some people might perceive the Jenkins project as a CloudBees project, when it isn't. That is indeed something we the project has been careful about. And on this I have two points that I want to make.
First, the test in question here is whether a CloudBees product (CloudBees Jenkins FooBarZot) would make people think that it is an authentic official "product" from the Jenkins community project. That is a confusion that goes in the other direction from your concern, which is about people thinking that Jenkins is from CloudBees. Put differently, I don't think I'm hearing from you that "AcmeCorp Jenkins FooBar" can confuse users that it is from (or the same as) the Jenkins project and not from AcmeCorp. Second, as a creator of the project that far predates the birth of CloudBees, and as a person who has gone through the whole Hudson/Jenkins split, the well-being of the Jenkins project is very important for me. And I think CloudBees has been respecting the project's independence very much. The trademark is with SPI, the decision making process is in the project meeting and the board, and we sign the same CLA. To the best of my knowledge, we've made CloudBees live by every rule we set for everyone. If CloudBees have failed to do that, I will try to correct those. But here, I think you are saying that actually "AcmeCorp Jenkins FooBar" would have been fine if AcmeCorp is not CloudBees but something else --- say Oracle, Praqma, or some such. It's one thing to be shot down for asking a favor for being a big contributor. But this is about getting penalized for being a big contributor. That's reverse meritocracy! In addition, if I may make an utilitarian argument, as an OSS project we should "use" commercial interests to our advantages. This isn't a zero sum game; when we make it easier for companies to contribute and get involved in the project, we the project benefit, in terms of faster growth, more features, etc. I've long held that view, and that's why our license is MIT license, not GPL. This mark usage request is really nothing more than a simple reflection of the "hey, Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees is really mouthful" feeling (and probably a bit of desire to emphasize the "CloudBees" part, I'd imagine.) If there's a growing concern about the role CloudBees is playing in this project, I'm happy to have that conversation. But it really feels like somewhat separate from the specific question at hand here. 2014-11-05 13:43 GMT-08:00 Dean Yu <[email protected]>: > Kohsuke linked to ASF's guidelines for use of their trademarks, but I > think the section above the guidelines is more relevant: > > http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/#principles > > In particular, I would call out this sentence (emphasis added): > > To avoid infringing ASF's marks, you should verify that your use of our > marks is nominative and that *you are not likely to confuse software > consumers that your software is the same as ASF's software* or is > endorsed by ASF. > > My concern is that the pattern "AcmeCorp Jenkins Foo", when used by > CloudBees, will cause confusion among users about the source of the Jenkins > project. This is unfair to CloudBees, but consider that Kohsuke and many of > the most active community members are now employed by CloudBees. Consider > that CloudBees recently changed their entire business model to focus on an > enterprise product based on Jenkins. Both of these factors increase the > likelihood of confusion. > > -- Dean > > > From: Kohsuke Kawaguchi <[email protected]> > Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected] > > > Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2014 at 10:39 AM > To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > Subject: Request for new "Jenkins" mark usage > > Jenkins project necessitates > <https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Governance+Document#GovernanceDocument-Trademark> > that when a 3rd party uses the name "Jenkins" it would have to get a > blessing from the project meeting. > > In the past, we've established that "Jenkins Foo by AcmeCorp" is generally > an acceptable pattern. CloudBees has gotten several approvals that match > this convention, such as Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees. > > In this post, I'm requesting that we bless "AcmeCorp Jenkins Foo" as a > generally acceptable pattern. And specifically, CloudBees want to get an > approval for the following patterns: > > - CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise > - CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center > - CloudBees Jenkins Analytics > > With my OSS hat on, I think our guiding principle in the past name usage > approval is that the use does not cause confusions among users as to the > source of the effort/product. This is the same with other organizations. > See what Apache says on this topic > <http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/#guidelines>. There are a > numerous other examples of names that fit this convention in other > open-source projects, such as HP Helion OpenStack > <http://www8.hp.com/us/en/cloud/hphelion-openstack-overview.html>, Piston > OpenStack <http://pistoncloud.com/openstack-cloud-software/>, CollabNet > Subversion Edge <http://www.collab.net/community/subversion>, Red Hat > Enterprise Linux > <http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux> > just to name a few. > > I also think a policy that's not overly restrictive to the participants, > even for commercial entities, helps the community grow faster. While > commercial interest to an OSS project is always seen bit suspiciously, > especially in this project given the past with Oracle, the participation > from companies like CloudBees, Praqma, and Red Hat helped in many ways, > ranging from putting more developers to event organizations. Linux is a > good example of this, which enabled a lot of participations & adoptions. > This was always my mental model for Jenkins, and one that fits with the > open-ended plugin ecosystem in Jenkins. > > I had some conversation with Andrew and Dean about this topic, and we felt > that the next step is to bring this to here for a wider discussion. > > Dean wanted to make sure (and I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth > here) that we aren't bending rules and principles just because it came from > CloudBees, as CloudBees is a big player in this community. And I agree --- > we should be just as happy to accept "Oracle Jenkins Cloud", "Microsoft > Jenkins Cluster", or whatever, in principle. > > So there it is. Your thoughts and feedbacks appreciated. I'm hoping that > we can get this officially approved soon. > > -- > Kohsuke Kawaguchi > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Jenkins Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Jenkins Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Kohsuke Kawaguchi -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
