[kde-community] Trademark clause in the Manifesto

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Hi,

I had a long discussion with Clemens yesterday after the Evolve BoF 
session about the trademark clause in the commitments page linked from our 
manifesto, and I'm not sure we don't actually do have a problem here.

This is the text:

If the authors of the software abandon it or disappear, they agree to 
transfer the trademark to the next maintainer

Clemens originally interpreted this to mean that on joining KDE a project 
has to transfer the trademarks to KDE e.V. and that on leaving KDE (which 
could happen...) the project maintainer loses the brand associated with 
the project.

I don't think it says that, but I also don't think that it can work like 
this. If I disappear or disband the Krita Foundation (which owns the 
trademark), then how would this transfer be implemented? It's probably 
something that will be specific for each situation, but as it is, I'm 
totally unsure how this is supposed to work in practice.


Boudewijn