[advocacy-discuss] FW: Wider Advocacy Initiatives

[Alan Coopersmith]

Siobhan P. Lynch wrote:
> I'm not sure it should, per se. I think maybe splitting the developer
> and guidance communities off from Sun, but allowing the "OpenSolaris"
> trademark to be owned by a non-profit steering group with loose ties to
> Sun might work, or Sun working out a free "licensing" of the trademark
> to this Non-Profit. 

Having discussed this with various Sun VP's and lawyers lately, I think
this is unfortunately not an option, due to the close link of "Solaris"
and "OpenSolaris" in naming and thus in trademark law - had we named the
community something that had no trace of Solaris in it's name, then the
trademark would be easier to separate, but since Sun isn't going to give
up control of the Solaris trademark, we're kinda stuck here.

Sun is offering to work with the community (specifically the Advocacy
project set up a few months ago) to work out guidelines for licensing
other distros to use the trademark, but Sun will still have ownership
and control of it.

(Life here is much easier for GlassFish since they didn't choose the
  name "OpenJavaAppServer" for instance.)

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering