Fedora Jumps into the Trademark Guidelines Ring
Where Fedora is, so do they stand: shortly after openSUSE announced its own trademark guidelines, Fedora is coming up with its own variation.
Fedora project leader Paul Frields announced in a blog entry that the project was issuing trademark guidelines for Fedora. Only days ago openSUSE community manager Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier had announced his project's own guidelines from Novell. The pairing up of initiatives isn't totally coincidental in that Frields had recently met with his openSUSE "Zonker" counterpart: "He and I talked about the revision of Fedora trademark policies back in September of 2008, and in particular how those might inform work to revise those of openSUSE."
Both products agree that there should be ground rules as to use of trademarks and modifications. While the openSUSE guidelines are rather restrictive in that only unmodified versions of its software can bear the openSUSE marks and name, Fedora's guidelines are somewhat more generous and Fedora also wants to involve its Project Board in its decisions. Another alternative it proposes is "secondary trademark usage guidelines" that can apply to those using modified, enhanced or shortened Fedora code. This code should get the designation "Fedora Remix" and have the appropriate design identification.
According to Frields, the ensuing trademark guidelines have been increasingly vital since Fedora's split from Red Hat. By his account the previous guidelines "had a lot of dust on them" and "essentially copies of Red Hat’s guidelines for its trademarks, with the word 'Fedora' substituted for 'Red Hat'." He considered the previous guidelines to be inflexible and hopes to rework them together with Red Hat lawyers to "develop something that was more reflective of our community’s desire to help spread Fedora." The new regulations would allow, for example, use of the Fedora logo on social networks like LinkedIn, personal and business websites, trade shows and other community events.
Somewhat baffling is the proposed new FedoraCommunity.org domain over which international community sites should get their official sanctioning. The popular French Fedora-fr.org website was not particularly pleased about having to change its domain name, nor was Iran pleased about restricting an .ir subdomain. Frields promises answers and suggests staying calm: "Considering our guidelines were really draconian before, and I don’t remember getting sued then, I’ll try not to lose too much sleep over it."
Comments
comments powered by DisqusIssue 268/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived and is Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.
-
Vanilla OS Initial Release Is Now Available
A stock GNOME experience with on-demand immutability finally sees its first production release.
Fedora-fr.org
Establishing a specific "fr.fedoracommunity.org" domain, as I see it, is simply a smart move. If a user encounters the overall "fedoracommunity.org" domain in another context, and types in the "fr." subdomain, we want them to end up at the established "fedora-fr.org" domain as a result.