[kde-community] Trademark clause in the Manifesto

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Tuesday 28 July 2015 09:37:40 Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> 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,

Indeed it doesn't say that.

Of course, if that's unclear, I think it would be welcome to propose better 
wording respecting the intent which is about making sure that if the current 
holder of the trademark of a KDE project disappears or abandon it he makes 
sure someone will be able to pick it up. It's somewhat a "last will" move.

If a project wants to leave the community then it obviously goes away with its 
trademark, end of story, we're not preying on other people trademarks.

> 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.

That's a very good point. I think there's ways to make that work legally (I 
mentioned "last will" earlier which generally has regulations around). We 
should probably approach our lawyer friends at the FSFE about it.

Cheers.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com

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