David,
> The best place for this question would be on the mailing list.
I had been posting this on the mailing list, but got no comment. So
though it makes sense to talk to a PMC member directly, which seemed to
work. I will cc: the list.
> As a short answer, there is no "owner" of OFBiz that could endorse
> something or allow it to officially use the name.
Well, are you sure?
The Apache License says:
<quote>
6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade
names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor,
except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the
origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.
</quote>
So in other words, this would indeed disallow the abuse of the OFBiz
brand, at least if it was a trade mark of the ASF? I am indeed not sure
if ASF is registering all project names as trademarks. And I think this
does make sense.
> Going forward my
> opinion is that all sub-communities within OFBiz should use the OFBiz
> resources to collaborate, like the mailing lists to communicate and
> the docs.ofbiz.org site to post something.
So you personally would discorage sites such as:
http://www.ofbiz.co.uk/
http://www.ofbiz.de/
http://www.nereide.biz/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=5
http://www.ofbiz.nl/
http://www.ofbizchina.com/ - which was where I wondered if it belongs in
this list at all
which are currently linked from the ofbiz.apache.org site and therefore
- in my opinion - are somewhat endorsed by the project.
From what I know about the way the ASF works (I have been a committer
and PMC member in a different Apache project myself) the PMC
(http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#pmc-members, for the
benefit of all who don't yet know the ASF jargon) would indeed discuss
and vote about a question like this.
Of course, this is to openly discussed, but I understand that the PMC
would indeed be in a position to make a decision about the content of
the official project site.
Quote:
The PMC as a whole is the entity that controls the project, nobody else.
Don't get me wrong; all I do here is to solve a practical problem, which
comes from here:
https://www.register.bg/user/static/rules/en/index.html#5.5
If the project feels like not encouraging Locale communities with their
own websites anymore, this would of course shed a different light on this.
In my opinion, a Locale community should indeed contribute any
translation and any code produced to the main project and not at all rin
any forks. But I think the purpose of a "national" OFBiz site would be to
a) provide information for potential users of OFBiz in that country in
their own language
b) organize the Locale community (and just that) and be a platform to
atract more people from that specific country to both contribute to as
well as advocate OFBiz
Regards,
Torsten
David E. Jones schrieb:
Torsten,
The best place for this question would be on the mailing list. There
are various reasons for this, but the main ones are that OFBiz is run
by more than just one person, and chances are there will be other
people interested in a reply.
As a short answer, there is no "owner" of OFBiz that could endorse
something or allow it to officially use the name. Going forward my
opinion is that all sub-communities within OFBiz should use the OFBiz
resources to collaborate, like the mailing lists to communicate and the
docs.ofbiz.org site to post something. In any case, this is exactly
what should be discussed on the mailing list as I'm not the one to make
the decision, nor do I have all of the information needed to do so.
-David
On Mar 12, 2007, at 7:51 AM, Torsten Schlabach wrote:
Hi David!
Nobody commented on this one, so I thought I'd ask you directly,
though I am not sure if you're the right person. In case you think
you aren't, you may be able to direct me to the right people.
The essential question for me would be:
Who owns the OFBiz brand and thus would be in a position to
"franchise" it to any organisation which is interested in creating
for example a kind of "official" locale community for OFBiz.
When I say "official"; as I know the rules of the Apache license, you
won't be in a position to forbid someone to run something like this,
but let's replace "official" with endorsed.
My reason for asking became a bit more concrete in the meanwhile.
A friend of mine, an open source ERP consultant in Bulgaria, is about
to support setting up a Bulgarian Locales community for OFBiz. He
would like to register the domain name ofbiz.bz for that. Now the
rules of the Bulgarian NIC say that in order to register a 2nd level
domain, you need to proof your right to using that name.
So would it be possible to get a letter from some saying that "[foo]
as the owner of the OFBiz brand name licensed [corporation] to
register ofbiz.bg for the purpose of creating a Locale community"?
Does the PMC have any formal concept of Locale communities?
Any comments / thoughts from you would be very welcome.
Regards,
Torsten
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: Links from main site to Apache OFBiz Communities -> Locales
Datum: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:05:54 +0100
Von: Torsten Schlabach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
An: [email protected]
Hi!
Do you think this site here should still be linked from the official
OFBiz site?
http://www.ofbizchina.com/
As most other locale communities have been using ofbiz.tld I checked and
found that ofbiz.cn as well as ofbiz.org.cn are taken, but also contain
just adveritising / domain parking sites.
Are these domains held by anyone related to the project or did they just
fall victim to domain grabbing?
Which makes me ask, just for curiosity: Is OFBiz a registered trademark.
Would anyone violate the ASF's rights by registering ofbiz.sometld?
Anyway, just FYI, I have just grabbed
- ofbiz.in
- ofbiz.mobi
I will happily transfer donate these domains to the ASF or to any
localization project approved by the OFBiz PMC. Just wanted to make sure
they won't be grabbed by someone who will commercially abuse them.
Regards,
Torsten
