THIS indeed is very important and affects also whether we need a legal
structure for the XSF.
On 3/4/26 10:33 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
On 3/4/26 6:01 AM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
As an aside, if we do pursue any kind of migration, do we need to
coordinate with Cisco regarding management of the Jabber trademark
agreement currently held by the XSF? That's something we may want to
clarify early on to avoid surprises.
As Dave Cridland mentioned elsewhere in these threads, the trademark
licensing agreement with Cisco over the JABBER trademark is indeed
something to think about.
However, here are several considerations:
1. Very few developers use the JABBER mark in their XMPP-related
software anymore, no? Doing so was rather common in 1999 and for a few
years afterward (when the XSF was still called the JSF), but that was a
long time ago. Most of the existing applications date to 2004-2006:
https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/approved-applications/
2. For all I know, Cisco might not be using the JABBER mark anymore either.
3. The purpose of the trademark licensing agreement was to make it
easier for all those open-source projects circa 2004 to use the JABBER
mark. If the agreement lapses (preferably in a controlled way, i.e., we
would contact Cisco and let them know we're shutting down old-XSF and
the successor organization or project doesn't wish to take on trademark
licensing), then projects and companies could continue to contact Cisco
directly about licensing the trademark. Or they could simply choose a
name that doesn't include the JABBER mark...
Peter
