Member projects of Conservancy don't have to sign over copyrights or other assets, but are welcome to. Many projects don't assign copyright, and that's fine. But as a 501C3, whatever assets a project does sign over to Conservancy will be managed by Conservancy in line with their charitable mission.
Details of services Conservancy offers to their projects are posted pretty clearly: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/. Project governance and licensing are also mostly project decisions, as long as it's an OSI/FSF approved license.
This trademark cancellation petition does not affect member projects directly - however if (for some strange reason) the registration actually were cancelled, arguably the Conservancy might be forced to change the trademark it uses for itself in the US. Thankfully, Conservancy has a registration in the EU as well.
A key issue is that the SFLC directly helped to spin off and incorporate the Conservancy, and assisted the Conservancy in applying to register the SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY® trademark in the US. So it's kind of odd to see the SFLC now - after 6 years - directly appealing to the USPTO to cancel Conservancy's registration without even talking to them first.
To see why this is important, imagine that someone not related to your project, but that had a somewhat-similar trademark registration, suddenly filed to cancel your project's registration. Lawyering up is all fine and good, but it's expensive if the TTAB case actually goes anywhere, and if you lose... you lose your name. The TTAB doesn't work like normal federal courts.
Not that slashdot threads normally want to hear more facts, but...
The LF effectively controls the use of the LINUX registered trademark (which is legally owned by Linus), plus, quoting:
"The Linux Foundation provides a neutral home where Linux kernel development can be protected and supported for years to come.
Linux Foundation fellowships sponsor the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and lead maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman
Linux Foundation IT operations run the systems behind Linux kernel development on kernel.org
Linux Foundation Training offers free and paid training courses and Linux certifications
Linux Foundation Events organize gatherings where kernel developers can collaborate"
So while the people who run the business operations (like Jim) may not hack, the organization they run and budget they control does help fund kernel development directly.
Also, the ASF is a 501C3 public charity - completely different governance than the 501C6 non-profits like LF (essentially top sponsors pay for board seats) and Eclipse (a mix of sponsored/elected board seats).
The Linux Foundation has their own internal events division, and they produce both their own events as well as are contracted to produce some events for other organizations:
http://events.linuxfoundation....
Obviously, the hotel physically provided the projectors, screens, etc., but it's the LF events team doing all the rest.
The LF normally provides a.PPT slide template deck for speakers, although it's not required.
It is what it is. Just be aware that while Ubuntu may be open source and have community governance participation, it's still partially a Canonical-driven project. That's fine, and the partnership has certainly gotten Ubuntu further (in terms of impact on the world in general) than it would have without a direct commercial driver.
It's always interesting seeing these things from the Apache perspective (which on the technical side is quite different from linux distros, I admit). Apache projects themselves are required to act independently. But that in no way means that the projects don't have a lot of drivers from commercial interests. It's just that the Apache board is a stop to any one commercial interest being the sole driver.
In any case, while personally I'm interested in the ubergeek commentary from Ubuntu insiders and/.ers, I'm professionally interested in communities that can tell a story to the world at large. Someday an linux distro will be something commonplace in the average human's life - and in a way that the human is actually aware of it. Perhaps Android is starting on that front, in terms of the human awareness of it.
The Apache license (like BSD, but better), has the clear advantage of allowing anyone to use the code. Including people who want to add it to something GPL. It's the universal donor.
It's the licenses, Anonymous Coward.
AOO only uses the Apache License, and doesn't care what license anyone else uses.
LO only uses the GPL, and wants everyone to use *only* the GPL.
The AOO project is happy to accept contributions from anyone - including LO folks - but only under our license.
Yeah, as Palestrina notes, the AOO project provides the raw numbers for actual downloads. You can even get the source for generating the numbers:
https://fisheye6.atlassian.com/browse/ooo/devtools/aoo-stats
Apples to apples is difficult to get to. I mean, seriously: of all those LO's bundled with linux distros, how many are being actively used? It's like getting a copy of IE with a Windows build.
Aren't most cool/. people the type who use perl and pipes instead of spreadsheets anyway? 8->
The official name of the new ASF project (and the software it ships) is Apache OpenOffice. While the ASF now legally owns the trademarks associated with OpenOffice.org, going forward we'll be using Apache OpenOffice as our trademark. While normally we require Apache projects to live at an *.apache.org domain name, given the broad (non-technical) end-user base of AOO they will still provide a user-based homepage at openoffice.org. Developers should probably go to openoffice.apache.org for technical info.
----
I'm not a lawyer, but I was an Apache OpenOffice podling mentor
To clarify:
- Sun took earlier work to create OpenOffice.org. They added the.org so they could register the trademark around the world. Oracle bought Sun, and after a while, someone internally said "why are we funding this thing", and essentially stopped their corporate development on the code. Some long-term contributors (from various companies) forked the code, and started a GPL licensed fork called LibreOffice. LO folks went on to create TDF = The Document Foundation as a non-profit to keep building their office suite.
At that point, Oracle in all it's wisdom (ha!) decided to transfer the trademarks to the ASF and licensed their code (from their last build) to the ASF under the Apache license. Since a bunch of volunteers (yes, many of them are from IBM) showed up at Apache to work on the code, the Apache Incubator accepted them as a podling, or potential project. Today's news story is about this podling graduating to be a top level Apache project, meaning that as long as there's a community to keep building it, the ASF will provide it a home and support. While the ASF is now the legal owner of the OpenOffice.org trademarks, the product will be called Apache OpenOffice going forward.
- The ASF has never required copyright assignments; in fact, we don't really accept them. We require that you license any contributions to us under the Apache license, so that the ASF can then re-ship our Apache projects under our Apache license. Once we ship a release (any project), the world is essentially free to take the code and use it whatever way they want. It's unfortunate that people keep bringing up the Sun/Oracle era copyright assignments in the context of Apache OpenOffice.
- I have to laugh when various commenters ask about merging the projects. First, it's clear that the people in the projects - i.e. the volunteers (or $bigco employees paid to work on them) mostly have made it clear that they have some different objectives and ways of working. So for the actual developers working on AOO and LO, it's unlikely the communities will merge. Many people would certainly like to see more code and idea sharing. In fact LO is welcome to incorporate any released AOO code in their project. However since Apache projects don't ship GPL code, the reverse is not always true, unless someone specifically licenses the code under the Apache License to AOO.
Fundamentally, AOO is happy to share code with anyone. LO will only share code with people who use the GPL. Which world seems like it would be a larger set of developers?
Do you specifically want a 'smartphone', or do you have a must-have feature list that's long? If not, why not get one of the simpler palm/phone combos?
I got the Samsung i500 shortly after it came out, and I love it. Form factor is great, battery life is good, color Palm 4.1 functionality works great, and the voice quality is as good as the network you're on (since basically the 'phone' software is just a Palm app that's hardcoded in - the mode switch button on the side is incredibly useful).
Signal strength is a little weak due to small antenna, and it does not have many of the funkier features bigger phones have like external speaker, enough space for MP3's, etc. Only thing I miss is not having an expandability slot of some kind: the original i500 is stuck with 16MB. Integration between Palm apps and the phone is good, but not great: most places in Address you can press Talk to dial the currently selected phone number, but you can't if you're actually editing an address record.
Other than very occasional sync problems, I've had no stability issues: the phone has never failed or had problems due to Palm apps or anything. So if stability is a concern, look for one of the less-feature-overladen Palm phones. 8-)
P.S. SprintPCS is great. But SprintPCS also sucks: no *supported* SMS exists for this phone that I know of.
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Member projects of Conservancy don't have to sign over copyrights or other assets, but are welcome to. Many projects don't assign copyright, and that's fine. But as a 501C3, whatever assets a project does sign over to Conservancy will be managed by Conservancy in line with their charitable mission.
Details of services Conservancy offers to their projects are posted pretty clearly: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/. Project governance and licensing are also mostly project decisions, as long as it's an OSI/FSF approved license.
This trademark cancellation petition does not affect member projects directly - however if (for some strange reason) the registration actually were cancelled, arguably the Conservancy might be forced to change the trademark it uses for itself in the US. Thankfully, Conservancy has a registration in the EU as well.
A key issue is that the SFLC directly helped to spin off and incorporate the Conservancy, and assisted the Conservancy in applying to register the SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY® trademark in the US. So it's kind of odd to see the SFLC now - after 6 years - directly appealing to the USPTO to cancel Conservancy's registration without even talking to them first.
To see why this is important, imagine that someone not related to your project, but that had a somewhat-similar trademark registration, suddenly filed to cancel your project's registration. Lawyering up is all fine and good, but it's expensive if the TTAB case actually goes anywhere, and if you lose... you lose your name. The TTAB doesn't work like normal federal courts.
For those interested in the factual history (with sources) behind the registration at question: https://communityovercode.com/2017/11/software-freedom-trademark-timeline/
So while the people who run the business operations (like Jim) may not hack, the organization they run and budget they control does help fund kernel development directly.
Also, the ASF is a 501C3 public charity - completely different governance than the 501C6 non-profits like LF (essentially top sponsors pay for board seats) and Eclipse (a mix of sponsored/elected board seats).
The Linux Foundation has their own internal events division, and they produce both their own events as well as are contracted to produce some events for other organizations: http://events.linuxfoundation.... Obviously, the hotel physically provided the projectors, screens, etc., but it's the LF events team doing all the rest. The LF normally provides a .PPT slide template deck for speakers, although it's not required.
It is what it is. Just be aware that while Ubuntu may be open source and have community governance participation, it's still partially a Canonical-driven project. That's fine, and the partnership has certainly gotten Ubuntu further (in terms of impact on the world in general) than it would have without a direct commercial driver. It's always interesting seeing these things from the Apache perspective (which on the technical side is quite different from linux distros, I admit). Apache projects themselves are required to act independently. But that in no way means that the projects don't have a lot of drivers from commercial interests. It's just that the Apache board is a stop to any one commercial interest being the sole driver. In any case, while personally I'm interested in the ubergeek commentary from Ubuntu insiders and /.ers, I'm professionally interested in communities that can tell a story to the world at large. Someday an linux distro will be something commonplace in the average human's life - and in a way that the human is actually aware of it. Perhaps Android is starting on that front, in terms of the human awareness of it.
The Apache license (like BSD, but better), has the clear advantage of allowing anyone to use the code. Including people who want to add it to something GPL. It's the universal donor.
It's the licenses, Anonymous Coward. AOO only uses the Apache License, and doesn't care what license anyone else uses. LO only uses the GPL, and wants everyone to use *only* the GPL. The AOO project is happy to accept contributions from anyone - including LO folks - but only under our license.
Thanks Ninjaroach! Both for the thanks and for posting with your ID and not AC.
Yeah, as Palestrina notes, the AOO project provides the raw numbers for actual downloads. You can even get the source for generating the numbers: https://fisheye6.atlassian.com/browse/ooo/devtools/aoo-stats Apples to apples is difficult to get to. I mean, seriously: of all those LO's bundled with linux distros, how many are being actively used? It's like getting a copy of IE with a Windows build. Aren't most cool /. people the type who use perl and pipes instead of spreadsheets anyway? 8->
The official name of the new ASF project (and the software it ships) is Apache OpenOffice. While the ASF now legally owns the trademarks associated with OpenOffice.org, going forward we'll be using Apache OpenOffice as our trademark. While normally we require Apache projects to live at an *.apache.org domain name, given the broad (non-technical) end-user base of AOO they will still provide a user-based homepage at openoffice.org. Developers should probably go to openoffice.apache.org for technical info. ---- I'm not a lawyer, but I was an Apache OpenOffice podling mentor
To clarify: - Sun took earlier work to create OpenOffice.org. They added the .org so they could register the trademark around the world. Oracle bought Sun, and after a while, someone internally said "why are we funding this thing", and essentially stopped their corporate development on the code. Some long-term contributors (from various companies) forked the code, and started a GPL licensed fork called LibreOffice. LO folks went on to create TDF = The Document Foundation as a non-profit to keep building their office suite.
At that point, Oracle in all it's wisdom (ha!) decided to transfer the trademarks to the ASF and licensed their code (from their last build) to the ASF under the Apache license. Since a bunch of volunteers (yes, many of them are from IBM) showed up at Apache to work on the code, the Apache Incubator accepted them as a podling, or potential project. Today's news story is about this podling graduating to be a top level Apache project, meaning that as long as there's a community to keep building it, the ASF will provide it a home and support. While the ASF is now the legal owner of the OpenOffice.org trademarks, the product will be called Apache OpenOffice going forward.
- The ASF has never required copyright assignments; in fact, we don't really accept them. We require that you license any contributions to us under the Apache license, so that the ASF can then re-ship our Apache projects under our Apache license. Once we ship a release (any project), the world is essentially free to take the code and use it whatever way they want. It's unfortunate that people keep bringing up the Sun/Oracle era copyright assignments in the context of Apache OpenOffice.
- I have to laugh when various commenters ask about merging the projects. First, it's clear that the people in the projects - i.e. the volunteers (or $bigco employees paid to work on them) mostly have made it clear that they have some different objectives and ways of working. So for the actual developers working on AOO and LO, it's unlikely the communities will merge. Many people would certainly like to see more code and idea sharing. In fact LO is welcome to incorporate any released AOO code in their project. However since Apache projects don't ship GPL code, the reverse is not always true, unless someone specifically licenses the code under the Apache License to AOO.
Fundamentally, AOO is happy to share code with anyone. LO will only share code with people who use the GPL. Which world seems like it would be a larger set of developers?
It really doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you write your code in, as long as the bikeshed gets painted white.
Do you specifically want a 'smartphone', or do you have a must-have feature list that's long? If not, why not get one of the simpler palm/phone combos?
I got the Samsung i500 shortly after it came out, and I love it. Form factor is great, battery life is good, color Palm 4.1 functionality works great, and the voice quality is as good as the network you're on (since basically the 'phone' software is just a Palm app that's hardcoded in - the mode switch button on the side is incredibly useful).
Signal strength is a little weak due to small antenna, and it does not have many of the funkier features bigger phones have like external speaker, enough space for MP3's, etc. Only thing I miss is not having an expandability slot of some kind: the original i500 is stuck with 16MB. Integration between Palm apps and the phone is good, but not great: most places in Address you can press Talk to dial the currently selected phone number, but you can't if you're actually editing an address record.
Other than very occasional sync problems, I've had no stability issues: the phone has never failed or had problems due to Palm apps or anything. So if stability is a concern, look for one of the less-feature-overladen Palm phones. 8-)
P.S. SprintPCS is great. But SprintPCS also sucks: no *supported* SMS exists for this phone that I know of.