Re: [gentoo-trustees] potential abuse of IP

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Wednesday 18 August 2004 23:09, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> Regarding the use of the name, I agree that we must take care that it
> cannot be used to trick users into thinking that they're visiting a
> Gentoo-official website (deliberately or not). For instance,
> http://www.gentoo-wiki.com, although a great project, isn't official
> while I've had some people think it was (happens when you're in charge
> for documentation :) Yet I don't think we should say "nay" to such
> names. On the contrary, I believe it is far better for Gentoo if more
> of these sites would emerge.

I also am certainly not against these sites and would like to encourage 
them. However I also believe that in this case it is not clear enough 
that they are not an official gentoo site. I think one important part of 
that is their use of the gentoo logo, and I think they should get their 
own logo (which could possibly contain the gentoo logo, but maybe it is 
better if it didn't)

> What we can do is require that the Gentoo name is used only when the
> site makes it very clear that it isn't an official Gentoo website. For
> instance, when I visit g-w.com (using links btw) I do read that "This
> is not official documentation" but it isn't placed on the first line
> (there's a message about gentoo-portage.com first).

I agree it is not clear (while present).

> Solutions to this particular case could be (one or more):
> - request that "Unofficial Gentoo documentation" is placed in the title
> - request that "The unofficial Gentoo documentation website" is the
> first sentence to be seen on the site in a fontsize not smaller than
> the regular size minus 1
> - request that "This is no official Gentoo website" is placed on the
> bottom of each page and with a contact e-mail address for _that_ site

I would like to add the request that a different logo is designed and used 
as the main webpage logo and favicon.

> We should also take care that we don't loose our community websites. In
> my opinion, when a site prominently sais it is a "Gentoo community"
> website (for instance the "Gentoo Italian Community Website") I'm all
> in favor of having them use the "Gentoo" name without further
> restrictions (still with the "GF has final saying" clausule).

I agree on this, I think we should be careful. We could even offer a 
gentoo-comunity logo that sites could use, but I think it is important to 
have those sites not use the gentoo logo (unless when erferring to 
gentoo).

> Remember, Gentoo is for the community, by the community. It wouldn't be
> fair if we restricted the use of the Gentoo name to Gentoo-official
> websites only.

I agree.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@g.o
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net