[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen trademark policy

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

The Evergreen Oversight Board has been working with Tony Sebro, an
attorney for the Software Freedom Conservancy, on a policy for the use
of Evergreen's word and logo trademarks.  On Wednesday, 12 September,
the Oversight Board voted to recommend the proposed policy to
community and other interested parties for consideration and feedback.

The text of the proposed policy can be found at

http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=governance:trademark-policy

Here's some historical background.  Since the beginning of the
project, the Evergreen trademarks have been held and administered by
the University System of Georgia Board of Regents on behalf of GPLS
and the Evergreen Project in general.  After the Evergreen Project
joined the Software Freedom Conservancy, the Conservancy at the
request of the Oversight Board and general community sentiment entered
into negotiations with the BOR to transfer the trademark to the SFC.
By August 8th, the Conservancy and the Board of Regents executed a
trademark assignment agreement, meaning that the Conservancy now holds
the Evergreen trademarks on behalf of the Evergreen Project.

The purpose of the the trademark policy is to permit appropriate of
the Evergreen logo and word marks to refer to the free and open source
software we've all worked hard to create, support, and use while
protecting the trademark from misuse or appropriation.  The policy is
not meant to be a burden on any reasonable use of the trademarks, but
for historical reasons that should be well known to anybody who has
followed the development of open source ILSs, it is crucial that the
trademark be held in community hands and protected to avoid any
potential confusion about what Evergreen is.

The community review period will extend though October 13, 2012, after
which the Board will vote on whether to adopt the policy, along with
any revisions that arise from community feedback.  I would request
that general feedback take place on the open-ils-general mailing list,
but if there are any parties that currently use the Evergreen
trademark who have specific questions regarding whether their use of
the marks will be permitted under the policy, they should also feel
free to contact the Oversight Board directly.  In particular, as a
specific issue that is known to affect current users of the trademark,
the trademark policy requires that if an entity uses Evergreen as part
of their name, any graphical logos representing that entity *must* use
the Evergreen logo to avoid creating a competing graphic mark.

Upon adoption of the policy, there will be a period of three months
for users of the trademarks to come into compliance with the policy.
I should emphasize that while the Oversight Board and the Conservancy
is obligated to actively defend the trademark and adhere to the policy
in order to retain it on behalf of the project, we are committed to
working to resolve any issues with current uses of the mark in a
friendly fashion.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Director of Implementation
Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366
skype:  gmcharlt
web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
http://evergreen-ils.org