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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Jody Garnett wrote on 10/11/17 9:30 AM:<br>
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cite="mid:CAOhbgAnDY-hzw6bQNE+QokA_DxOw9sQFouzDBKo1ZvVrDHLY2w@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">That is great Shane, thanks for reaching out to us.
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<div>Your work is on <a href="https://choosealicense.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://choosealicense.com</a>
is inspirational .. literally. We borrowed your Q&A
approach to help members of the geospatial field find
appropriate open source projects: <a
href="http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/choose-a-project/"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/choose-a-project/</a></div>
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Nice! Great Q&A as a way to lead new users through a simple set
of questions to lead them in the general direction of the right
resources.<br>
<br>
FYI, I wasn't involved with ChooseALicense, just ChooseAFoundation.
8-)<br>
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<div>I am not quite sure what help we need, for starters I am
double checking with the board email list (and probably the
secretary) what trademarks the organization posses. <br>
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You can claim any name/logo as your trademark if your organization
uses it consistently (and hopefully with a ™ or ®) to provide a
specific and consistent product or service to the public.
Registration is not required, but does give you other advantages.<br>
<br>
An important question here is: who, specifically, is providing the
various software *products* to the public? I.e. do your bylaws or
other process documents define that Marble, PostGIS, etc. are
projects of OSGEO the foundation itself? Or are they run
independently, and just happen to be listed from your website?
Trademarks are about ensuring that users know *who* they are getting
a specific product from.<br>
<br>
As a general statement, I'd think you would claim OSGEO as a mark,
along with the names of each specific software product you provide,
and possibly FOSS4G if OSGeo is the producer of those events.<br>
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<div>Short term goal is to have a page acknowledging trademarks
used while writing a new website. When describing our open
source projects we would like to indicate what proprietary
software and file formats can be used in a hybrid
architecture, or migrated from when adopting open source. </div>
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<div>I found the FSF take, of <a
href="https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Trademarks.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">acknowledging trademarks being
unnecessary</a>, but that may be too risky for us as an
organization.</div>
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The question is: what are your organization's goals? The FSF's
views work fine for them as an advocacy organization, but I would
urge you in the strongest possible terms to *not* follow that, but
rather to take trademarks seriously if you want to attract new
projects and contributors over the long term.<br>
<br>
- Shane Curcuru<br>
<a href="http://punderthings.com/" rel="noreferrer"
target="_blank">http://punderthings.com/</a><br>
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cite="mid:CAOhbgAnDY-hzw6bQNE+QokA_DxOw9sQFouzDBKo1ZvVrDHLY2w@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>I will pass your <a href="http://chooseafoundation.com/"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://chooseafoundation.com/</a> URL
onto our marketing email list, looks like it will be another
great resource.</div>
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<div>--</div>
<div>Jody Garnett</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On 11 October 2017 at 05:16, Shane
Curcuru <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:shane@punderthings.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">shane@punderthings.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hello!
Someone mentioned you were talking about trademarks and I
was<br>
wondering if I can provide any advice (apologies for
jumping into your<br>
board list if that's inappropriate...)<br>
<br>
I volunteer as VP, Brand Management at the ASF and wrote
the trademark<br>
policies for Apache projects, so if folks here do have
questions, I<br>
might be able to help. For general info about how
trademarks work with<br>
open source, I've collected some useful links:<br>
<br>
<a
href="https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources#other"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.apache.org/<wbr>foundation/marks/resources#<wbr>other</a><br>
<br>
Separately, thru my Punderthings consultancy, I'm building
up a new<br>
website to help open source projects understand what
non-profit<br>
Foundations are out there to help them with governance:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://chooseafoundation.com/"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://chooseafoundation.com/</a><br>
<br>
If OSGeo has a documented process by which new projects
can join, I'm<br>
happy to take a pull request to add you to the list.<br>
<br>
- Shane Curcuru<br>
<a href="http://punderthings.com/" rel="noreferrer"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://punderthings.com/</a><br>
<br>
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<br>
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moz-do-not-send="true">Board@lists.osgeo.org</a><br>
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rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.osgeo.org/<wbr>mailman/listinfo/board</a></blockquote>
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