On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Andy Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > Simon Phipps wrote: >> >> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Eike Rathke<[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> Team OOo paid bursaries for individuals that went to OOoCons and >>> Hackfest, paid hardware for buildbots and pootle servers, paid students >>> for the OOo internship. Do you think that Apache will cover those >>> expenses? >>> >> >> It's worth noting that these grants were always made by Team OOo (and >> indeed >> by FrODev) at their sole discretion and without any ability to officially >> direct them from the OOo project itself. I find it hard to see how Apache >> would be able to unilaterally shut down an independent, complementary >> activity like this. >> >> As to Shane's point about referring to some other list; presumably, as in >> other instances of this, we'd need to have a proposal formulated before >> doing that, and hence the topic is still appropriate here. >> >> S. >> > > Seems to me there are two options open. > > 1) The grants are made to Apache with no strings attached. > > 2) The businesses stop receiving donations for OpenOffice.org. >
Think of it this way. IBM pays me to work on the project and pays for my travel to project-related events. If that is legal, then it is also legal for a non-profit organization to raise money to enable someone else to do these same activities. But you need to think of that organization as external, not part of Apache, not part of this project. Apache projects consist of individuals, not for-profit corporations, not non-profit corporations. However, to the extent they use trademarks owned by Apache, like "OpenOffice.org" in their name or in their fundraising materials, then this may be a concern for us as the trademark owners. And depending on how the funds are used, this may be a concern for regulators. For example, if I created a non-profit called "Friends of the Red Cross" and was not affiliated with the Red Cross, but used their logo in my fundraising materials, you can imagine that I would quickly receive a letter from the Red Cross lawyers. I'd probably also get a letter (or visit) from the Secretary of State in Massachusetts, asking to see my books and investigating whether I was making fraudulent use of that logo. > For either someone that has worked with the organizations that is a member > here needs to contact them and see what they can/ are willing to do. > > Andy >
