On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 01:31:06PM -0700, John Plocher wrote: > It isn't a noun, it is an adjective. "The OpenSolaris ____" is the > proper usage. As in > > The OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) > The OpenSolaris Community > The OpenSolaris Nevada (aka ON) Community > The OpenSolaris Advocacy Community > The OpenSolaris Indiana Project > The OpenSolaris ON Consolidation > ... etc ...
A rare case in which trademark rules and common sense align well. Too often people say "I'm running OpenSolaris" which of course is imprecise and confusing. > How can anything be destructive if *the community* decides to do > so? It seems it would be *more* destructive if some outsiders > forced the community do do something against its will. I'm not aware that the OpenSolaris Community has decided to qualify any particular distribution as special. Agree that if it did there would be no problem (unless that turned out to be a poor choice). > The OpenSolaris trademark is owned (for better or worse) by Sun. > The brand owners and decision makers at Sun (aka PR/Marketing) > are also among the core contributers in the advocacy community. > While they have chosen to develop their branding in the open, > they have not delegated their ownership rights to anyone else. Agree. > They are currently working on branding guidelines for use of the > OpenSolaris trademark - things like "OpenSolaris Compatible", > "Built with OpenSolaris", "The OpenSolaris Appliance Distro", > and so on. The first two examples you give are different from what we're talking about here, and the Advocacy Group's efforts to establish criteria for them are welcome. Your third example, and the one in play here, contains an element of exclusivity not present elsewhere. Anyone can make a distribution that meets a certain set of verifiable requirements to be called "Powered by OpenSolaris", but once we've gone and said that Project XYZ is "The OpenSolaris _____", we've shut everyone else out and committed ourselves to one team's worldview. That decision requires both greater care and broader approval than any single Group is chartered to provide. And I would also argue it requires that the thing to be called "The OpenSolaris _____" not only exist in concrete form but have a track record of quality of which most of the Community would approve. > It may even be a great idea for the entire OpenSolaris mega- > community to ratify those branding guidelines once the Advocacy > Community finishes developing them. Be sure to raise the > question as part of your involvement there; doing it /here/ > isn't reaching the right audience. Again, in some cases that Group is the right audience; in others, the OGB or even the Membership as a whole is more appropriate. > From Sara's branding discussion at the OpenSolaris Developers > Summit this weekend, it seems that Indiana is working with > the advocacy community (or maybe the other way around) towards > the goal of being able to brand Indiana as something like: > > "The OpenSolaris Laptop Reference Distro" > or > "The Definitive OpenSolaris Core Reference Implementation" > or maybe even > "Sun's OpenSolaris Operating System" I have no position on the third; Sun is of course welcome to sell whatever it likes. The first two require broader approval than the Advocacy Group is permitted to offer. > Today, none of the distros out there can label themselves > with the OpenSolaris brand (even though the downloads page > does so :-) One of the outcomes of the advocacy community's > brand guidelines effort is to allow them to be branded as > "built with OpenSolaris Components", OpenSolaris Compatible" > or somesuch. Just like Indiana will be able to do. Yes, and this is goodness. > The elephant in this room is that people seem to fear that > Sun will usurp the OpenSolaris brand and call their Solaris10 > follow-on product simply "OpenSolaris" (the noun). IMO, the > place to raise those concerns is not to the OGB (it is rather > premature at this point), but to the advocacy community where > those discussions and decisions are being made. That's not what I'm worried about, nor do I see this as a proxy or a warm-up for that battle (should it be fought at all). It would be bad, but as you suggest it's premature to worry about it. And although I would oppose such a move as abusive and domineering, I would probably object less to Sun attempting to call Solaris "The OpenSolaris Reference Binary Distribution" than to them attaching that name to an ephemeral distribution with characteristics that are at best simply unknown and at worst contrary to widely held values. At least I can use Solaris today, and talk to people who've used it for years and learn that it's a well-engineered product with a solid reputation. If Sun is going to attach our Community's name and exclusive endorsement to something without our consent, I'd much rather they attach it to that than to Indiana. > At some point we need to ask if it really matters. If the > OpenSolaris Distro Community (TBD...) were to come up with > a set of reference distro "recipes" for appliances, laptops, > web servers, enterprise servers and the like, and someone > took one of those recipes and made a product out of it, why > wouldn't we expect it to be called "OpenSolaris"? Wouldn't > this be a /good/ thing? You just said OpenSolaris isn't a noun, and I agreed with you. Now you seem to be saying it should be used as a noun, and we should support that usage. You haven't changed my mind from where it was at the beginning of your message: it will be good for these products and projects to be able to use the trademark; it would not be good for them to use OpenSolaris as a noun, nor for them to claim exclusivity with respect to the OpenSolaris Community in any domain without broad approval (OGB or Membership). -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
