Proposal: Mailing List owner policy
Dear Community, One important part of mailing lists being healthy is owners/moderators[1]. They moderate the lists, they help users that want to subscribe/unsubscribe but don't know how to, they enact emergency moderation in the very very seldom case that it is needed, etc. So to keep our mailing lists healthy we need to be sure to have healthy list owners. In plural, more than one, because from time to time, we go on vacation and the list duties still need taking care of. For that I'd like to enact this policy: Mailing lists should have at least 2 active owners, ideally 3 [Obviously exceptions apply, like if we just started a mailing list to coordinate translators for a language that has no translation in KDE yet, we'd probably have no way to get 2 list owners] One keyword in that sentence is "active". Mailing list ownership/moderation un-activity is hard to detect. One way to potentially detect it, is by those summaries that sysadmin sends periodically for lists with lots of mails to moderate, but that doesn't cover all the cases. For example, it's possible that a mailing list has 2 owners and only one of them is inactive, since the other one is keeping the list in working condition we don't see it as a problem, but if that person goes on holiday, then it suddenly is. For that I'd like to enact this policy sub-point: Mailing list owners will be contacted every year asking if they are still active and if they want to continue being list owner or if they'd prefer we find a substitute. If they say "please find a substitute" or fail to answer in a given time frame (I'd say a month is fair), they will be removed as owners and in case the "at least 2 active owners, ideally 3" policy is broken we'll find a new person. Does that sound something like we could agree on? Then the big question is "who will do this work?" Because it seems quite a bit of work (albeit only once a year). I would suggest the Community Working Group does this, as it's a way to keep our community healthy, but i understand it's quite some work, so i volunteer to do it if the CWG doesn't feel this is a task they want to take on. Things I'm missing? Improvement suggestions? Cheers, Albert [1] yes, i know they are not the same, but since one is a subset of the other, let's pretend they are.
Re: KDE Apps name trademarks
On Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:01 AM Ben Cooksley wrote: > On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 7:16 AM Albert Vaca Cintora > wrote: > > > > > > > But if there are situations where third parties are living off our > good name, > > > we should fight this. We already have the rights to do so. > > > > Should we? Isn't that the same that RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, etc. do? > What's wrong with charging for our apps as a distributor? > > There isn't anything wrong with charging for our applications as a > distributor. > > The potential problem arises if they portray themselves as an > 'official' version, which is a label only we can provide. > It is especially problematic if the binary they've packaged contains > malware or other alterations that have a negative impact on the user > experience, which users will attribute to us, not the distributor of > the software. > > The situation with Redhat/SUSE/Canonical is also slightly different, > as we already have an established relationship with all three of > those. This includes them receiving early access to our releases along > with them being subscribed to our security pre-announce service. > > In this case, the vendor in question has not made contact in any form with > us. > Just quick note the version of kdiff3 on the windows store carries the old icon. This seems to imply it was made before kdiff3 joined kde. Like during the 4 year lapse of maintainership. Let's make sure we have all the facts here. > > Cheers, > Ben >
Re: KDE Apps name trademarks
On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 7:16 AM Albert Vaca Cintora wrote: > > > > But if there are situations where third parties are living off our good > > name, > > we should fight this. We already have the rights to do so. > > Should we? Isn't that the same that RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, etc. do? What's > wrong with charging for our apps as a distributor? There isn't anything wrong with charging for our applications as a distributor. The potential problem arises if they portray themselves as an 'official' version, which is a label only we can provide. It is especially problematic if the binary they've packaged contains malware or other alterations that have a negative impact on the user experience, which users will attribute to us, not the distributor of the software. The situation with Redhat/SUSE/Canonical is also slightly different, as we already have an established relationship with all three of those. This includes them receiving early access to our releases along with them being subscribed to our security pre-announce service. In this case, the vendor in question has not made contact in any form with us. > > We can, under the GPL, enforce that any fixes made to apps (eg: so they work > better on Windows) get back upstream, but that's it. > > If our apps were trademarked, why is the person doing the Windows packages > not allowed to use the app name, but the person doing the Debian packages is? > In what they differ? Do we want to become IceWeasel? > > I think we should be happy there are packagers that distribute our software > on Windows, the same way we are happy there are packages distributing our > software on Linux distros. > > Cheers, Ben
Re: KDE Apps name trademarks
On 2020-07-21 23:27, Filipe Saraiva wrote: Em 20/07/2020 07:55, Albert Vaca Cintora escreveu: I think we should be happy there are packagers that distribute our software on Windows, the same way we are happy there are packages distributing our software on Linux distros. The problem is not people packing and distributing our software, including selling them. The problem is people using the original name of our software in an environment where we could for ourselves pack and distribute them. If I am not wrong, apps stores don't allow a same software using a same name but distributed by different "owners". If we talk about Trademarks and Policies, we talk about rights. A right of using a name appears in that moment, when someone begins using it. This is the natural right and does not need any registration. A registration of the right can be done in several ways: Registering a trademark, a company name, a domain name, all of this gives you a right to use this name. When we talk about a Trademark we need some kind of policy, this is right. :) This policy is a group of use cases, which restricts a free world by rights. So, do we need those use cases and rights? Or is it better maybe, like Martin said, to speak with people violating our rights? (that are naturally given by using those names) Or is registering a domain name for every application an alternative? I could provide those domain names, for free, if it is wanted. Best wishes, Uli (KDE Supporter) If it is the case, we will be in a scenario where we can not use the original name of our software to distribute them. It is a very different scenario of a Linux distro repository where we are not going to pack our software and compete to distro packagers. -- KONTENT GmbH Geschäftsführung Winkelhauser Str. 63 47228 Duisburg Deutschland https://kontent.com Fon: +49 203 3094-300 Fax: +49 203 3094-310 HRB 8762 / Amtsgericht Duisburg UID: DE 2107 83977
Re: KDE Apps name trademarks
Dear Filipe, dear KDE community,
Filipe Saraiva - 21.07.20, 23:27:52 CEST:
> Em 20/07/2020 07:55, Albert Vaca Cintora escreveu:
> > I think we should be happy there are packagers that distribute our
> > software on Windows, the same way we are happy there are packages
> > distributing our software on Linux distros.
>
> The problem is not people packing and distributing our software,
> including selling them.
>
> The problem is people using the original name of our software in an
> environment where we could for ourselves pack and distribute them. If
> I am not wrong, apps stores don't allow a same software using a same
> name but distributed by different "owners".
>
> If it is the case, we will be in a scenario where we can not use the
> original name of our software to distribute them.
>
> It is a very different scenario of a Linux distro repository where we
> are not going to pack our software and compete to distro packagers.
Just a question that occurred to me several times as I read new mails in
this thread:
Has anyone ever tried to talk to the packager of those applications in
Microsoft Store?
Maybe it can be as easy as telling him "hey, thank you for packaging
some of our applications, however, we like to do it officially, would you
consider using a different name, or well even better help us?" or
something like that?
*Before* setting up any kind of policy as long as there is just one
person doing this… or are there more?
Being a slight bit ironic here: Could it be that talking to the person
who creates those packages would actually help to resolve the issues at
hand? Is this even a possibility?
If it happens repeatedly with other persons as well and on other stores…
there is still an opportunity to think about an policy… I'd say.
There is a book "Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein" ("how to be unhappy") by
Paul Watzlawick that I just remembered. In there a person has no hammer.
But one of the neighbors of him has. But then the one without the hammer
thinks things like "Oh, he is not going to give it to me anyway"… and
things like that. Eventually he would go to his neighbor, ring the door,
and as the neighbor opens tell him "I don't need your frigging hammer!".
Just something to consider.
In case you talked to the person who does those other packages on
Windows Store already and I missed it… ignore what I wrote as much as
you like. (Of course you are free to do this in any case.)
Best,
--
Martin
