[haiku] Re: Rethinking the Haiku Distro Guidelines
- From: "Jorge G. Mare" <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:18:54 -0700
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 10:13 +0200, Stephan Assmus wrote:
> I agree with the general notion that re-packaging an existing Haiku release
> and adding a few more pieces of software is not different from what ends up
> on our harddrives when we customize our installation.
>
> But still everybody seems to want to hold on to the concept of forcing
> people to change the name from Haiku to something else if the changes
> become too much. Or if they include development code or whatever. IMHO,
> this is just too complicated. Who decides what is just a customization and
> what is diverting too much from Haiku's unique look and feel? It becomes
> impossible to draw a clear line.
Yes, this is true. Policing this alone can be a tedious thing and could
even potentially become a source of friction.
> But something else is bothering me. If distributions are being made to
> address specific needs, and we all agree that we would like to address
> these needs in Haiku itself eventually, then isn't the obvious, preferable
> solution that whoever puts in work to make a customized version of Haiku
> should instead be encouraged to work directly with the project?
Yes, that would be the ideal.
> In general,
> we try our best to welcome new contributors. I dare say that most people do
> not have a hard time getting their patches into Haiku, as long as they work
> and follow the coding style. There are some exceptions to this, I am
> painfully aware of (Brecht may throw something in my direction). The
> biggest single reason for patches being hard to get commited is when they
> are fairly complex and introduce new problems along with solving others.
>
> Anyway, my point is we want people to work with us, not in parallel. And my
> first argument was that the trademark policy needs to be crystall clear.
> For these two reasons, I would say we should not make it any easier to spin
> off custom distributions of Haiku. We should protect the Haiku name and
> logo, period. If people want to influence the distribution to address
> specific needs, but they don't want to release something not being called
> Haiku, they have the very sensible option to become a project contributor.
> Or they need to take the extra hassle of removing a few strings and
> replacing some bitmaps. Which is easy to do, contrary to what some seem to
> believe.
I personally agree with this. However, it is going to be difficult to
reconcile such a firm stance on trademarks -- which can sometimes be
seen by some as too inflexible or even hostile -- with the desire to
embrace community or third party efforts as a means of increasing the
chances of more people becoming direct participants to the project. This
can be very tricky.
Regards,
Jorge/aka Koki
Other related posts:
