Discussion: creating a compact with teeth
BenJam opened this issue · comments
AFAIK trademark registration provides the owner with the ability to defend abuses of its mark, but this process can often be costly. Particularly if the licence (included within the compact) differs from the compact in so much as it explicitly permits use and redistribution. My concern is that registration of a trademark would have no material effect on abusers and may, in some cases, result in unnecessary cost to the community (registration and a potentially failed legal case).
I'm interested in exploring ways in which a community can use its compact/licence to protect its financial sustainability without forgoing the freedoms enshrined in the licence, but I am not sure trademarks and a freeloaders.md file is the way to do it.
I'm happy to continue the discussion in this issue or elsewhere. I'll also be at http://sustainoss.org talking about this.
The question of enforcement will be an expensive one regardless. I think we can create enough teeth that this is pretty real, and with a relatively low barrier to entry (see Red Hat as an example where the vast majority of the teeth land with trademark and distribution terms).
I'm about to put a much longer draft of some thoughts here, along with an idea of what a set of sustainable open source community principles might be. I just learned about sustain! I wish I could come. :)
I just learned about sustain! I wish I could come. :)
Sad times. Take a look at the previous event's report at https://sustainoss.org/assets/pdf/SustainOSS-west-2017-report.pdf or a precis by Pia over at https://medium.com/open-collective/sustainoss-the-report-881e4b12d180
Hopefully there's enough in there to spark some ideas!