[kde-community] KDE office (was: Your KDE highlight of 2014?)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, December 29, 2014 13.43:44 Mirko Boehm wrote:
> the least of our worries. If a significant portion of commits are coming
> from that room, why wouldn’t it be a KDE office? :-)

Two reasons:

a) if person / company X is permitted without specific license to say they run 
a KDE office, it becomes much harder (even impossible) to prevent person / 
company Y from doing the same in future. We may like X and trust them and all 
that, but the precedence of "hey, set up an office and call it a KDE office" 
opens the door for others we may not. Trademark is predicated on active 
protection.

b) KDE could easily find itself liable legally, reputationally, or both for 
any negative activity[1] that occurs in that physical location. 

A "KDE office" implicitly represents KDE. It's all fun and games until someone 
gets an eye poked out, and unfortunately for KDE it would be KDE's eye.

Given the investment of time, effort and money that has gone into creating the 
KDE trademark (both legally and reputationally), it would seem that showing 
the small amount of prudence and organizational maturity to require "KDE 
offices" to get official permission to use the trademark would not be too much 
to expect.

Would you be cool with someone starting a random Endocode office?

For concerns about creating barriers: if someone finds it too onerous to apply 
for such permission[2], they really can't be that serious about it. Even 
getting a commit account for KDE requires filling out a small amount of 
information, committing to important documents (e.g. Manifesto, CoC) and 
otherwise demonstrating good intent.

[1] "Negative activity" could be a wide spectrum of things: not paying rent 
due; illegal activities; activities that go against KDE's Manifesto and/or 
Code of Conduct ....

[2] Which should be made a simple process.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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