[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G 2020 - Halifax site causing confusion

Jérôme St-Louis jerome at ecere.com
Sun Dec 1 20:49:22 PST 2019


Jody,

AFAIK Jeff works from his home office and his phone number is listed at 
https://gatewaygeomatics.com/contact.html

I question whether obtaining trademark to FOSS4G is possible after it 
having been freely used in the general sense of Free and Open Source 
Software for Geospatial in a general sense for many years?

However, on foss4g.ca both OSGeo - Ottawa and OSGeo - Quebec names and 
logos are featured, and both chapters have officially called to 
re-direct, take down the content, or clarify the fact that the FOSS4G 
2020 takes place in Calgary, not Halifax.
That could be ground enough for .ca to take action?

The name/logo of OSGeo itself is also part of those chapters logo, and 
that may already be trademarked?

Best regards,

-Jerome

On 12/1/19 11:37 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:
> I agree it is serous, and I recommend adding this to the next board 
> meeting (ideally conference chair could attend?)
>
> But I also want to say as an organization we do not own the trademark, 
> and we cannot compel action of an individual. Is this statement you 
> disagree with?
>
> Perhaps this is a good reason to obtain the foss4g trademark? That 
> would be my advised course of action. Obtain trademark and ask dot ca 
> to remove this site.
>
> I also think we could figure out where Jeff is working and phone him.
>
> Any other thoughts on actions (not seriousness) Mark?
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 4:37 AM Mark Iliffe <markiliffe at gmail.com 
> <mailto:markiliffe at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Jody,
>
>     I’m sorry to disagree so strongly, but i see this is as a severe
>     issue that dramatically needs to be resolved with haste.
>
>     As a past (co-)chair of a global FOSS4G, i know the focus is to
>     ensure that funds are raised and the delegates and sponsors are
>     clear on the offering. Right now, this isnt the case as that site
>     does look like Halifax is the host, not Calgary.
>
>     I would strongly urge the Board to take immediate action to ensure
>     that people are as clear as possible on what is being offered. The
>     domain is the first step to this.
>
>     There are many reasons why time has been taken to resolve this -
>     and as someone who spent the first half of this year quite ill and
>     dropped many balls - I can understand this...! But, we’re less
>     than a year away, so let’s work on resolving this as quickly as
>     possible.
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Mark
>
>>     On 1 Dec 2019, at 22:28, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     k
>>     We do not maintain copyright on foss4g, this is a deliberate
>>     choice as I understand it. So I do not think we can ask the ca
>>     domain to intervene.
>>
>>     As for Jeff being unavailable we like to respect folks volunteer
>>     capacity and ability to contribute when they have time. We have
>>     spent some effort working around his in availability as a board.
>>
>>     It is worth bringing this up with the next board meeting. Indeed
>>     it may be appropriate to go about claiming the foss4g trademark.
>>
>>     On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 11:39 PM Steven Feldman
>>     <shfeldman at gmail.com <mailto:shfeldman at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         Jody
>>         ,
>>         Is this a case where the board is the committee that needs to
>>         act?
>>
>>         Regards
>>         Steven
>>
>>
>>         +44 (0) 7958 924101
>>         Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>>         On 1 Dec 2019, at 20:01, Jody Garnett
>>>         <jody.garnett at gmail.com <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         
>>>         We do not need a procedure for everything, some troubles
>>>         will just need to be handled if they occur.
>>>
>>>         I do not intend to dismiss your interest, osgeo committees
>>>         are empowered to act and remove individuals who are not
>>>         welcome. Indeed we ask that all committees / projects /
>>>         events have a code of conduct.
>>>
>>>         In the August F2F
>>>         <https://wiki.osgeo.org/images/7/7d/Face_to_Face_Meeting_2019_Bucharest.pdf>
>>>         meeting we discussed establishing a black list for
>>>         individuals who are not welcome at our events, and a "gray
>>>         list" for individuals who we "wanted to talk with" before
>>>         they attended one of our events again. The kindest way we
>>>         could think to handle this is to ask the individual to sign
>>>         a the code of conduct (so there could be no
>>>         miscommunication with respect to behaviour).
>>>
>>>         Individual committees can also control their membership with
>>>         a motion, projects can adjust an individuals commit access,
>>>         and so forth. To specifically answer your question the board
>>>         is in position to update the charter members list (and is
>>>         supposed to do so as a result of inactivity).
>>>         --
>>>         Jody Garnett
>>>
>>>
>>>         On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 at 20:08, Steven Feldman
>>>         <shfeldman at gmail.com <mailto:shfeldman at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>             Haven’t seen a response yet and I note that as of now
>>>             the foss4g.ca <http://foss4g.ca> site is still up. That
>>>             is disappointing to say the least.
>>>
>>>             I have copied in Karine Jean who was the co-chair of the
>>>             Halifax bid using the email on her OSGeo listing,
>>>             perhaps she can remove the Halifax site or ask Jeff to
>>>             do so or explain why they think it should remain almost
>>>             a year after the decision was made to award to Calgary
>>>             not Halifax?
>>>
>>>             *A question for the board*: Do we have any procedure for
>>>             revoking Charter Membership in the event of behaviour
>>>             that we consider to be in conflict with OSGeo
>>>             principles? I am not suggesting that this is the case re
>>>             Halifax web site but I think it prompts the question of
>>>             what would/should we do if a CM is considered to have
>>>             possibly gone rogue?
>>>             ______
>>>             Steven
>>>
>>>             Unusual maps in strange places - mappery.org
>>>             <http://mappery.org>
>>>
>>>             Subscribe to my weekly “Maps in the Wild
>>>             <http://eepurl.com/dKStT-/>” newsletter
>>>
>>>>             On 29 Nov 2019, at 22:14, Jonathan Neufeld
>>>>             <jneufeld at tecterra.com <mailto:jneufeld at tecterra.com>>
>>>>             wrote:
>>>>
>>>>             Hi All,
>>>>             I apologize for sending this through the Conference_Dev
>>>>             list, however I’ve been trying to reach Jeff McKenna
>>>>             for the past month with no success. If I am out of line
>>>>             here, please let me know.
>>>>             Jeff - I’m following up again on my request to take
>>>>             down your Halifax FOSS4G site athttps://foss4g.ca/.
>>>>             As I have previously mentioned, the Halifax site is
>>>>             causing confusion with some members of the community.
>>>>             In the spirit of open collaboration and building
>>>>             towards a successful event, we are*requesting that you
>>>>             take down the site for Halifax 2020 which is making a
>>>>             false claim of hosting FOSS4G 2020 and sowing confusion
>>>>             amongst potential participants.*
>>>>             Regards,
>>>>             Jon
>>>>             JONATHAN NEUFELD
>>>>             CO-CHAIR
>>>>             FOSS4G 2020 CALGARY
>>>>             http://2020.foss4g.org/
>>>>             _______________________________________________
>>>>             Conference_dev mailing list
>>>>             Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>             <mailto:Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>
>>>>             https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>>>
>>>             _______________________________________________
>>>             Conference_dev mailing list
>>>             Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>>             <mailto:Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>
>>>             https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>>>
>>     -- 
>>     --
>>     Jody Garnett
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Conference_dev mailing list
>>     Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>     <mailto:Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>
>>     https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>
> -- 
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
> _______________________________________________
> Conference_dev mailing list
> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/attachments/20191201/c51a1448/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Conference_dev mailing list