[haiku] Re: Haiku User Groups
- From: David McPaul <dlmcpaul@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:16:04 +1000
On 20 April 2010 07:25, Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Matt Madia wrote:
>> This is my position:
>>
>> If any person, group, business, HUG, anyone wants to generate any
>> income through the use of Haiku Trademarks, then it needs explicit
>> permission from the owner of the trademark, this being Haiku Inc.
>>
>> To give an analogy, if BeOS was being sold by anyone, I could see Be
>> Inc, having an issue with it and requiring explicit permission
>> beforehand. I envision a similar issue if their logo/trademarks were
>> directly used on merchandise or services being sold.
>>
>> Since right now, the NPO's set up for selling goods is rather limited
>> (eg CafePress in the US & UK). It makes sense to be receptive to
>> certain people/groups who request the ability to sell merchandise. The
>> key idea is that the owners of the trademark have control over who can
>> and cannot generate income from the trademarks.
>
> I agree with you in principle to a certain extent, but an interpretation to
> the letter of the RFC seems to articulate something different; admittedly, I
> am a bit confused by the RFC, so it is possible that I may be
> misunderstanding something.
>
> There is one point, though, that does strike me as potentially
> counterproductive, and it is that when you put all third parties in the same
> bag, you are basically putting HUGs and other community efforts in the same
> plain field as for-profit businesses. I am not so sure this is good from a
> community building POV.
>
> Yes, business-based for-profit revenue streams should be subject to the full
> force of the trademark policy; no doubt about that. But I feel the policy
> should be more forgiving with revenue streams generated by the community
> purely for advocacy purposes.
>
> Just to give you an example: let's say that Haiku Italia creates Haiku
> merchandise specific to their language and/or territory, they sell that at
> events, and then use the generated revenue to fund their Haiku-related
> activities (website hosting, transportation to conferences, etc.). I
> personally don't see the harm in doing this, as the revenue that Haiku
> Italia would be generating would not exist otherwise and thus does not
> conflict with (it rather complements) Haiku Inc.'s fund raising activities.
> I think in this sort of situations, a waiver of sort for HUGs would empower
> the regional communities and serve as an incentive for them to become part
> of the project.
Is the issue really about the money generating aspect or about the
usage of the trademarks?
I think we should stick to the trademark aspect and deal with the
money part separately.
So the policy should grant specific rights to use the trademarks (You
are granted the right to place the trademark on a website for the
purpose of associating the website with Haiku)
and a revoke clause (Any specified or implied permission to use these
trademarks can be revoked by Haiku)
Then a general clause about how additional rights can be granted by
Haiku after consideration by the community.
The specific rights can then be updated as new rights are granted.
The reason being that if you draw a fuzzy line about where the
allowed/not allowed permissions are you invite lawyers in.
Income rights can be made part of this (you are granted the right to
use the trademark on a t-shirt that promotes your user group and to
sell the t-shirt to raise funds for the user group)
>> Outside of generating income from the use of trademarks, I personally
>> don't see an issue with a group managing themselves financially.
>> Though, I also don't see an issue with the group requesting money from
>> the NPO either.
The main issue with granting rights to use the trademarks is that the
trademark might be used in a manner that brings Haiku Inc into legal
trouble.
--
Cheers
David
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