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: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 10 2020, @04:29PM
A necessary evil.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(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.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tizan on Friday July 10 2020, @05:20PM
Here is a company that tracks its users to make money...Most probably it knows more about you than your life partner.
Sure it is giving back to open source ...well may be ...or is it a way to get back into the business of trying to moneytize open source that they gave up on and that
github and gitlab have taken and ran away with.
So be suspicious ...be extremely suspicious.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday July 10 2020, @07:00PM (3 children)
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/google-says-trademarks-should-be-open-source-too-ibm-disagrees/ [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:24PM (2 children)
Heh, from that article...
The irony here is too great not to comment on. The "Firefox" name came about in the first place because Mozilla originally decided to call their new stripped-down browser "Firebird" (as a separate application from the Mozilla Suite, now called Seamonkey). This was, I suppose, slightly confusing because there was already an free relational database system called "Firebird", but I doubt anyone was really confused very much by it, certainly not "severe confusion at best". And given that Oracle is perhaps best known for their relational database system...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:31PM (1 child)
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
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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @07:38PM
meet the new evil, same as the old evil.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @08:27PM
Open source trademark is the antithesis of trademark. Genericicity (is that a word) is a basis for striking down trademarks. Which is to say if it isn't exclusive, it isn't a trademark. Exclusivity is the whole point of trademark.
Legally there is no reason to do this. Therefore the reason for doing it isn't legal.
IOW, I don't know what scam they are running. But I am certain that it is a scam.
(Score: 3, Touché) by progo on Friday July 10 2020, @09:31PM
I haven't analyzed it but Google is so evil that it's safe to assume this is evil. Probably like AMP.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Friday July 10 2020, @09:49PM
Is their any aspect of our lives that will not be owned by a corporation?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by darkfeline on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:11AM (1 child)
It's heartening to see dozens of Soylentil comments about Google's evility with nary a useful observation in sight. Given all the complexities of society at large, having a safe bubble to retreat to is comforting.
The problem that Google is trying to solve here quite obvious to me. Trademark ownership and freely licensed code are two separately things. While the source code for, say, FreeBSD, may be freely licensed, I cannot take the source code, with modification or not, set up a website using the FreeBSD name and logo, and distribute my software, for payment or not. I can make my own name and logo, say, BobBSD, but not use FreeBSD's.
Managing FOSS source code is actually quite simple once you have a suitable license and possibly a copyright assignment process set up, because the ownership of the code is clear: the author of the particular bit of code owns it unless they have assigned that copyright, but anyone can use the code due to the FOSS license.
However, trademarks are much harder to manage. Who owns the logo and name for some small FOSS project with a dozen contributors? If there's discord and the project splits, which half gets to keep the logo?
There's also the issue of aftermarket service providers. If I start a VPS service that provides virtual FreeBSD boxes, I can certainly advertise that by using the FreeBSD logo on my website, as that is fair use. Or can I? Each project may have its own opinions on what counts as fair use. Maybe I can use FreeBSD's logo but not OpenBSD's, but I'd have to consult a lawyer. Certainly, managing trademarks is beyond the ability of a developer working on a FOSS side project, just as writing a FOSS license is beyond their abilities. Thankfully, they can use one of the already available, high quality FOSS licenses.
But no such high quality standards or recommendations exist for trademark management. Hence the current project.
It sounds like what Google is doing here is what the FSF did for FOSS licenses. As an independent developer, I can go to the FSF website and follow some straightforward guides to set up my project with the right FOSS license and have confidence that my code will be licensed properly. In the future, I may be able to go to the Open Usage Commons website and similarly follow their guides to ensure my project has clear and healthy processes around trademarks, so there's no confusion about what is and isn't fair use of the trademark, and how it is owned in case a rowdy contributor wants to take it and do their own thing.
Unfortunately from what I could see, the website doesn't include any details so it's hard to say whether this ends up good or bad. But I think it's ultimately good because even if this particular implementation fails, the fact that there's a clear problem and someone is trying to solve it, means that other people are going to be trying too. Someone is bound to get it right, if not Google.
Trying to provide an informed and objective analysis is hard, but I've found that LWN does a really good job at it. It probably helps that a lot of the articles are behind a subscription paywall. Thankfully, many Soylentils would not be at all interested in unbiased reporting, so they can save their hard earned cash to donate to SN instead.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:32AM
Fuck off, corporate shill, and pass me a kleenex, something nasty spilled over here.