Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 03:21:04 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com> To: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> Cc: rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com (Rodney W. Grimes), freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (user alias) Subject: Re: The FreeBSD trademark. Message-ID: <12499.796216864@freefall.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 26 Mar 95 12:56:32 %2B0200." <199503261056.MAA24612@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
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> It's new to me that an 'Inc.' is going to be founded. I always thought > it would be done in a more public way, like a 'consortium'. It will, but you still need to be an `Inc' to protect the PEOPLE behind it! What if we got sued over something? You want the poor people running it to lose their shirts? No thank you. I don't know how German law works, but since we'll be governed by US laws everyone I've talked to has said that incorporation is the way to go. It will still be non-profit and have "consortium" structure, of course. Geeze, the XFree86 Project, Inc. did the same thing and I didn't hear any complaints from you at the time! :-) > Anyway, some kind of non-profit organisation - which does not exclude that > there are employees and treasurer and some worldwide funding being done - All of this is still perfectly possible with an incorporated body. I think you are reading too much into "Inc". > Who will be the owner of the trademark? How can an 'Inc.' be controlled > by the FreeBSD community? It can be controlled by a board of directors who are elected by the community. There has to be a reasonably small number of people running the show or you spend ALL your time arguing and none of it actually doing anything. Believe me, I've been there, I know. This is not to say that such a board of directors would not be answerable to the community, but it's hardly going to call for a network-wide vote every time it wants to sign a check - that would be insane! > I don't like the idea if some company now takes off and says > 'I own the trademark' . This would discourage many contributors Again, you're reading too much into this. The company owns the trademark to prevent ABUSE of the name. They're not going to somehow decide that since they own the name everybody has to pay them a dollar or something. That's simply not how it works. Jordan
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