Date: 16 Jan 2002 14:43:36 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Francisco Reyes <lists@natserv.com>, FreeBSD Chat List <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSDmall vs Daemonnews mall Message-ID: <yhwuyhudbb.uyh@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20020116085240.01c9e3e0@localhost> References: <3C459893.44485DA3@emailrob.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20020116085240.01c9e3e0@localhost>
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Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> writes: > At 08:51 AM 1/16/2002, Francisco Reyes wrote: > > >What do you mean by non-profit arm? Are you talking about the foundation? > >They have nothing to do with the mall or vice-versa. The foundation > >doesn't even own the trademark for FreeBSD. > > This is something that should be corrected immediately. In November of > 2000, at BSDCon in Monterey, it was announced that the trademark > would be transferred immediately. Why was that promise broken? If one > of several competing vendors owns the trademark, it unfairly tilts the > playing field. "Unfair" is a unfair word, since whoever owns it has paid good money to pay for and defend it. And so far, the playing field hasn't tilted far enough to worry about; the only advantage is that trademark users are supposed to say something like "The FreeBSD trademark is owned by XXX" or even the silly, but popular "Trademarks are owned by their owners". If XXX tried restricting the use of the mark, wouldn't they loose too much business to continue the policy? And aren't these known to be good guys? But there is always some small risk that the owners will get desparate (medical bills or something) and try fee-licensing or will resell the trademark to someone like the first owner of the Linux trademark who tried fee-licensing Linux, probably just to get a good price for it later. (A price (aka "settlement") which was never disclosed, BTW.) TWO QUESTIONS: 1) Why do we think that The FreeBSD Foundation is any more trustworthy than The FreeBSD Mall? The only thing I know about the board of directors is what I'm willing to believe of their one-page web site http://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org and this announcement http://people.freebsd.org/~jdp/foundation/announcement.html . They don't even mention the trademark issue (or recognized it as one) at their site. I think I'll propose to them that they have a big bunch of links to other people's web sites where people can find "references" where people have presented some evidence of their trustworthiness and said whatever else they think of the foundation. I suppose someone else should have another list for links to opinions the foundation wouldn't care to link to. 2) How do we convince The FreeBSD Mall to transfer the trademark? Begging has done wonders in the GNU/Linux world, so some might want to try that, but it's probably going to also take cash from the foundation. What could be done to help them get the money to do it (other than writing a check)? I think the "references" idea above would help a lot. Maybe the foundation should start a special fund for the trademark purchase which should draw a few days of free publicity and would give people a goal to work on and talk about when promoting the foundation. I suppose that it would be best for them to try to negotiate a price or purchase an option to buy the trademark so there actually is a goal number. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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