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posted by martyb on Friday July 10 2020, @04:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the EMBRACE-EXTEND-EXTINGUISH dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:31PM (#1019198)

    Mozilla originally decided to call their new stripped-down browser "Firebird"

    Oh oops, this is a lie. I forgot that the "Firebird" name actually came after a trademark dispute; it was originally called "Phoenix".

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:41PM (#1019217)

    And so quickly you forget Debian's "IceWeasel", kinda a counter-pun play on foxes on Fire.

    First the evil branding of Open Sores, and now the business "good will" of Open Umbrage. This will not end well.