Shawn Walker wrote:
> On 02/11/2007, Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld at sun.com> wrote:
>
>> The community may (or may not) choose to *GIVE* the name to the project
>> to use.
>>
>
> The community hasn't been given the right to give the name to anybody,
> or for that matter, take it from anybody. The community explicitly has
> no rights over the name whatsoever.
>
> You can't enforce policy that doesn't exist. A policy surrounding the
> trademark should have been defined at the inception of the community.
>
>
And it is *precisely* because of *that* problem that I proposed that in
the long run, we should consider one of two courses of action:
1) get Sun to give up the rights to the mark
or
2) create our own mark, and change our identity (sort of what all
the Xen-derived distros had to do).
Yes, it sucks that we're at this impasse, but unless Sun is willing to
do number 1 now, I don't see a way forward other than 2, that doesn't
leave us with the possibility (or likelihood) of being back in the same
boat in a year or three. (A *possible* way would be for Sun to yield
control by some kind of contractual commitment, while it retains
*ownership*. But I think that is no likelier than #1 in the first place.)
At the end of the day/month/year/decade, I think its most likely we're
going to have to set up the non-profit, and settle on number 2. (The
non-profit to manage the mark is required in either case.)
Yeah, it sucks, and pulls energy that is might have been fruitfully
spent elsewhere. But I don't think it would be wise to be too cavalier
about something as fundamental as our core identity.
Now, on another point, I *do* believe Indiana probably should evolve
into The OpenSolaris distribution (or whatever reference name we are
able to choose), because, even though it is mostly staffed by Sun, its
truly open, and (branding aside) really does hold true (or at least more
so than some other alternatives) to the core values embodied in the
historical Solaris code base. But, Sara and Ian, please give the
community the credit and opportunity to come to that conclusion on our
own, rather than having it forced down our throats.
-- Garrett
PS: For the Indiana folks, they need to really *understand* what they
are trying to sell with a brand. If OpenSolaris' brand identity is a
vibrant open community, then the biggest players need to participate
accordingly. If its just another way for Sun to push out beta bits, and
get developer mindshare for the Sun distribution known as Solaris, then
the whole rest of the OGB, the Constitution, etc, is all just a sham and
we should collectively dissolve ourselves.
