On Mar 12, 2007, at 2:12 PM, Torsten Schlabach wrote:
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.
If people care about it, they'll answer. Of course, this may have just been a victim of bad timing. Unfortunately there is no way to make sure that every question gets answered and every problem gets solved, especially in a zero funding, 100% volunteer structure.
> 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.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure, because "OFBiz" is not a trademark, and neither is "The Open For Business Project" or any variation on these that I'm aware of.
> 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 allwhich are currently linked from the ofbiz.apache.org site and therefore - in my opinion - are somewhat endorsed by the project.
That is my opinion on how things should change.
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.
My understanding is that same, that the PMC decides how this will work, based on community feed back (which I think is something needed at this point on this topic).
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#5.5If 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 toa) 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
Yes, this would be the general idea/goal, and I think what I mentioned above with using the OFBiz resources would be the best way to go. That is just my thought on it, but it is based on the fact that previous attempts to do this on separate sites have never worked and my guess is because the people who started it haven't been able to keep it going, and haven't been able to attract enough attention and make it easy enough for others to get involved.
-David
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 containjust adveritising / domain parking sites.Are these domains held by anyone related to the project or did they justfall 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 anylocalization project approved by the OFBiz PMC. Just wanted to make surethey won't be grabbed by someone who will commercially abuse them. Regards, Torsten
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