Talk:Draft Version 0.0.1

The below area is for discussion about the guidelines — changes, questions, objections, suggestions, what should be in or out, etc. Please put you comments underneath the heading that matches the part of the draft that you are discussing.

The "Commentary" pages that are linked at the bottom of the Guidelines are modeled after the "Annotations" portion of a Restatement or code. They are not meant as a place for discussion, but rather are for providing information to the end users of the Model Trademark Guidelines about legal, practical and ideological considerations embodied in the guidelines. (If you want to discuss what's on the Commentary page, use the "Discussion" tab for the appropriate Commentary page).

Universal considerations for all uses

Domain Names

You write "top or second level domain name"; I suspect you mean "Public Suffix + 1" - http://www.publicsuffix.org/. But perhaps it's better to say "in any label in a domain name".

-- Gerv (talk) 10:38, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

I was permitting for third level and directories, but query whether that should be allowed. I also never heard of "Public Suffix" before, so I'm not sure that readers will know what it means. A link to Wikipedia for the definition?

I chose top and second level because the cases fall along the lines that those are source identifying locations, and directories and tertiary don't tend to be. But we can exclude altogether if you think that's cleaner and/or better.

Pam

• The point is that "top" and "second" level don't actually mean what you want them to mean. I live in the UK, which has the ".uk" TLD. However, unlike ".com" and friends, it's currently subdivided into "co.uk" (companies), "org.uk" (organizations) and so on. So if you say "second level", you mean "co.uk", when actually you want to mean things like "foo.co.uk" (which is third level). The Public Suffix List is the data repository which provides a "map" of the DNS and shows where the "dividing lines" are between public and private registrations, because those dividing lines are in different places depending on where you are in the DNS. The PSL does have a Wikipedia page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List>, but you could also link directly to the publicsuffix.org site.

-- Gerv (talk) 11:41, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

Ah, I see what you mean -- correct that top and second don't always work. Your approach makes more sense; I'll try to find a way to make it understandable for those of us less informed.

Pam

I'm going to move this to the "Discussion" page for the draft. The Commentary pages are meant to be sort of "Reporter's Notes," information for adopters of guidelines on what the parameters of what they might want to change or what legal judgment calls have been made. I realize the structure isn't entirely clear and I'm trying to figure out how to make it clearer. Basically, I wanted the Discussion pages to be about things like this, and the Commentary to be annotations.

Use for software

Uses we consider non-infringing

Distribution of unmodified source code or unmodified executable code we have compiled

Official Branding Flag?

I wonder if it is good practice to encourage software projects to build their software with a compile-time flag which makes it easy to include or exclude their trademarks? This would then allow the trademark policy to say "we as a project guarantee that if you don't enable this flag, then our trademarked logos and names won't be used in the package in a way which requires permission. And if we accidentally do include a logo in the non-branded version, we won't give you grief about it." That enables people to opt into or out of trademark use easily.

Mozilla software has a "--enable-official-branding" flag (so official branding is disabled by default) although I'm not sure we provide the guarantee in that form.

If we do want to encourage this practice, what's the best way to do it? Include sample text in the policy, and encourage projects to alter their software to make the text true?

-- Gerv (talk) 10:20, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

Media restrictions?

Is this section intended to restrict distribute only to "optical media, memory stick or download"? That sounds like a paragraph ripe for unintended technological obsolescence :-) There's already rotating magnetic media that you've missed out, and I'm sure people will invent new media forms.

-- Gerv (talk) 10:33, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

Use for non-software goods and services

Uses for which we are granting a license

User groups

Membership Fees

Some user groups charge membership fees for the purposes of venue hire, etc. Can we be a little more flexible than "no membership fees at all"?

-- Gerv (talk) 10:38, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

Absolutely! I was just trying to keep out profit-making. Suggestions for revision?

Pam

General considerations about trademarks and their use

Proper trademark use

Comment from Tmarble about Proper use of Trademarks: "I think it will be easier to read of the examples all have parallel structure... A counter example first (Unacceptable) followed by a positive example (Acceptable)."

I've corrected it.