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From: David Nalley <david@gnsa.us>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 10:50:23 -0400
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Subject: Re: apache binary distributions
To: general@incubator.apache.org
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On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Roman Shaposhnik <roman@shaposhnik.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 12:46 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz
> <bdelacretaz@apache.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:50 AM, Roman Shaposhnik <roman@shaposhnik.org> wrote:
>>> ...is Apache Brand meant to protect *any* possible object/binary
>>> artifact or only those that PMC actually care about?...
>>
>> IMO any object/binary created from our source code has to be clearly
>> identified as not coming from the ASF.
>
> Well, the real question is: do we aspire to have a monopoly on certain
> binary convenience artifacts? IOW, if a Hadoop PMC blessed and RPM
> as one of those artifacts, does it mean that only that RPM (however
> potentially screwed up it is from the standpoint of Fedora packaging
> guidelines) is the RPM that can be called Hadoop?
>

That depends.
And what it largely depends on is the product, the PMC producing it,
and the user base.
Some projects have problems with abuse of their marks. People bundling
additional (occasionally malicious) software with the ASF-produced
software. Some of those projects enforce (rightly IMO) trademark to
the benefit of the project and its users.

Other projects are much more lax with trademarks, yet remain very vibrant.

Mozilla had similar problems to those that GCC had, which were
described earlier. Linux distributions were patching the 'official'
release, and inadvertently causing problems which ended up giving
Mozilla products an undeserved (at least for those specific issues)
bad reputation. So they rectified this by enforcing their trademarks,
and declaring that any patches had to be approved by Mozilla if you
were to retain the Mozilla brands on the software. Is that overkill
for most of the products that call the ASF home? Probably. But for
some projects, it makes sense.

(This is completely separate from a discussion about a third-party
using ASF marks for their own gain and confusing folks about the
origin of the software they are using)

--David

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