SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Announcing a new kind of open source organization
Google has deep roots in open source. We're proud of our 20 years of contributions and community collaboration. The scale and tenure of Google's open source participation has taught us what works well, what doesn't, and where the corner cases are that challenge projects.
One of the places we've historically seen projects stumble is in managing their trademarks—their project's name and logo. How project trademarks are used is different from how their code is used, as trademarks are a method of quality assurance. This includes the assurance that the code in question has an open source license. When trademarks are properly managed, project maintainers can define their identity, provide assurances to downstream users of the quality of their offering, and give others in the community certainty about the free and fair use of the brand.
In collaboration with academic leaders, independent contributors, and SADA Systems, today we are announcing the Open Usage Commons, an organization focused on extending the philosophy and definition of open source to project trademarks. The mission of the Open Usage Commons is to help open source projects assert and manage their project identity through programs specific to trademark management and conformance testing. Creating a neutral, independent ownership for these trademarks gives contributors and consumers peace of mind regarding their use of project names in a fair and transparent way.
Is it good or a new kind of evil?
Also at Phoronix.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @05:11PM (4 children)
Neither the post from Google nor the Phoronix article is clear about what exactly this organization does.
But it's from Google, so assume it's evil until proven otherwise.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday July 10 2020, @05:18PM
What ever it is, if enough people like it and get into using it some google script kiddie will decide to screw it up. Just like they've done with G Maps and Gmail.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday July 10 2020, @05:35PM (1 child)
It looks to me like it's a mechanism for Google to control trademarks of successful open source projects, because the suits and lawyers think the value of, say, Nginx is the word "Nginx" and the logo they created for it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:01PM
This, sadly, was my first thought.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 10 2020, @07:49PM
Also:
But it's from Google, so assume it's Advertising and personal info tracking until proven otherwise.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.