[ogb-discuss] [trademark-policy-dev] [osol-discuss] [advocacy-discuss] Project Indiana and the OpenSolaris name

[Keith M Wesolowski]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 04:21:17PM -0500, Shawn Walker wrote:

> 1) The community has never formally defined what it believes to be an
> acceptable use of the trademark (the community was asked to help with
> this)
> 
> 2) As a result, any current usage of the trademark whether allowed by
> Sun or not is not necessarily representative of the community since
> the community never approved it.
> 
> If we're going to deny Project Indiana the ability to use the
> trademark, then I think all parties should be denied it's use until
> the community explicitly defines and approves its usage.

All true.  However, as I've said elsewhere, I believe the big problem
here is that Indiana is using the name in a way that prevents others
from using it in the same way.  You can have your thing "based on
OpenSolaris technology" and I can have mine, and if Suzy doesn't like
either of ours she can go make her own thing "based on OpenSolaris
technology".  But there can be only one OpenSolaris.  It's important
to capture that distinction in our policies - there should be a low
threshold for being able to use the mark in some ways, a higher one
for others, and the highest or perhaps none at all for using it in the
way we're currently discussing.

That fact that the mark was used in various ways to effectively state
technical fact ("Blah is a distribution of OpenSolaris technology") is
just an indicator of a need for policy.  It is also possible that such
uses are outside anyone's ability to control; they may constitute fair
use.  In that case, the OGB's authority would probably be limited to
disciplining community members who violate our policy; in the extreme,
the Members could vote to expel them but they could go on using the
mark in ways that Sun cannot prosecute.  As IANAL, I do not claim to
know which uses, if any, might fall into this category.

-- 
Keith M Wesolowski		"Sir, we're surrounded!" 
FishWorks			"Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"