Hi Charles,
I inserted
inside the Logo policy page the notion of "substantially unmodified
version of LibreOffice" that already exists in the Trademark Policy.
Sure - but the Logo page seems to suggest to me that you can use the
LibreOffice logo for anything at all - the "Usage example" seems to
accept that you -can- use the "LibreOffice" name for:
* Community made DVDs or USB keys with "LibreOffice"
* Supporter websites referring to "LibreOffice"
As contrasted to the TDF mark, which is reserved for "substantially
unmodified" software. Does that mean we are even defending the
LibreOffice mark at all ? what are the limits on its use ? the TM policy
says it can only be used for "Substantially unmodified" software too.
Reading the legalse, I am -very- confused; it seems like there are a
lot of things that we are trying to use this policy for:
* restricting spokespeople to a chosen set
* ensuring that binaries integrity and origin is known
* defending our trademark so it is valid: ie. it must be
LibreOffice
Then there are two sets of marks:
* LibreOffice
* The Document Foundation
And it (seems) to me - that we want to have a different policy for
these two marks.
Well - worse than that - I read the "Trademark Guidelines" - which
incidentally are quite good legalese, and it says there is no
difference. Then I read the "Rules" page, and it says there is a
difference.
Which is correct ?
It fixes the inconsistency or even the contradiction between the two.
You may object of course we might just merge the two pages, but
that's where I disagree: Legally speaking, trademarks, logos, image
marks, wordmarks are different notions and have different values.
Really - I strongly dislike this belief that we want different rules to
a logo vs. word-mark, vs. Trademark. Are we really saying it is ok for
someone to call it "LibreOffice, The Document Foundation" - if they use
a different font/set of colors / style of writing ? I hope not.
Mozilla use a single policy for their "Marks" and IMHO we should do the
same (as the original, legally reviewed guidelines did) - I see you
replaced "Mark" with "Trademark" in each case, I don't think this makes
for a clear, crisp policy.
Thank you everyone... I guess the vote is being reconducted for one
more period of 24 hours now.
My take is: that the situation gets more confused rather than clearer
the more that the pages are edited The original TM policy, as
reviewed some weeks ago was good, currently it is not watertight.
I would strongly suggest we step back and re-consider actually what it
is we want to achieve with this separation of different logos / marks;
it is -highly- unclear to me.
Then I suggest we write that down clearly, succinctly, and minimally -
in tight language that can be understood by everyone.
That is IMHO not where we are today; so I recommend we do not approve
the policy in its current form; sorry.
HTH,
Michael.