OStatic

OpenSUSE Community Manager Joe Brockmeier has a very interesting post up about trademarks, in which he argues that they are vitally important to protecting branding related to open source projects. His post is a reaction to this one from Linux book author Keir Thomas, author of Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, which we covered here. Thomas recounts getting comments from Canonical about how his use of Ubuntu trademarks may have included taking too many liberties. Thomas finds rules like Canonical's, surrounding trademarks, to be too restrictive. I see good points made on both side of this argument, and it's an important one.

In November, openSUSE implemented some significant changes to its licensing model, with the aim of making the distribution easier to remaster, re-work, and redistribute. At that time, openSUSE community manager, Joe Zonker Brockmeier, said that work was also underway to clarify openSUSE's trademark guidelines.

This week, the openSUSE Project released the newly re-examined trademark guidelines. The guidelines, available in PDF format, are designed to complement the new, easier to customize and redistribute openSUSE releases by explaining how to handle branding in different situations.