[Koha] Koha trademarks

[Rachel Hamilton-Williams]

Hi
> Unfortunately most foundations are built on a corporate model, and 
> corporations are not democratic by nature. I think we can do better 
> than a raw corporate model. I looked at the list of Chris' 
> suggestions, and they looked to have mature projects, like wine, on it.
>
> >I really would prefer Koha to be controlled by a democratic foundation
> >instead of a self-perpetuating one. There are risks to democracy, but
> >at least if it stuffs up, it's the whole community's responsibility.
> >Both SFC nor DSpace look undemocratic to me, appointing barons for
> >life to rule over their serf projects.
> >
>
> And how is this behaviour different from the secret invitation only 
> mailing lists we've been hearing about?
Erm, I think that is probably overstating things a little. From time to 
time something crops up that, usually for reasons of privacy or 
legality, are tricky to talk about on a public list.  We've had a 
"koha-manage" list for years, that has been lucky to be used more than a 
couple of times.

For example, as part of approving people to go onto the paid for support 
list, we need to ask for some private info (referee checks etc), so we 
don't have that kind of thing going to a public list.

> Is secrecy called for in a tiny project that as far as I would know 
> would never have a burden that would warrant pitch blackness?
Usually not.

 > Business to business talks ought be just that; I fail to see why it's 
necessary to drag the Koha name into a single
 > business or two.

Sorry not sure what you mean by this...

 > Just as I fail to see why trademarking under a single or couple of 
corporations is beneficial. It is imperative that this > school boy 
secrecy be ended now or risk perpetuating a good ole boy network.

Well as a "girl" I'm not sure it's entirely fair to call us an old boy's 
network :-)

A trademark does need to belong to a legal entity, and we haven't had a 
Koha legal entity for trademarks to belong to that isn't either a vendor 
or a client (essentially). There is some cost to trademarking (not 
huge), but the organisations that have felt able to pay that cost, and 
have felt they have the most to loose if a hostile organisation were to 
trademark koha instead of a Koha project member,  have been vendors. 
There's nothing particularly "sinister" in that.

And I believe in good faith, the companies involved have said they'll be 
prepared to hand over those trademarks to another Koha legal entity 
(like a foundation) once it's in place and able to accept/hold them.

The alternative is to NOT register the trademarks, which is the case in 
some jurisdictions, where in the view of the "locals"  there is little 
threat of malicious trademark registration. I suspect that over time if 
we don't set up a foundation, more and more trademarks may need to be 
registered by someone, and my preference would be that they are at least 
by orgs involved in the project, not by competitive library system 
companies.

> I don't think it's the concentration of power in an individual that's 
> given to harm, bodies such as Congress are equally given to 
> corruption. It's the loss of direction, neutrality, and response to 
> feedback that is the source of the rot.
>
>
> >Anyway, this is all moot: LibLime are working on something and we're
> >waiting to see what they propose.
>
>
> Why is it that things are more and more often rendered moot by 
> unilateral action taken by LibLime when those actions have not 
> reflected the will of the community? My problem is that they *aren't* 
> proposing things to this list in sunlight.
Without searching back through lists to check that, I'm not sure if it's 
true or not. The idea of a Koha Software Foundation has been kicking 
around for a long time, and other ideas have been put forward too, 
Liblime have  decided to take the bull by the horns and actually 
investigate setting one up.
> Rather, I think we should start taking formal votes with reasonable 
> announced time frames. Hopefully this will come to pass with feedback 
> being opened on bugzilla or projects like the one that's currently up 
> to allow for voting for Koha con. 
I'm not sure what right now we'd be formally voting on WRT a foundation 
or other entity. I guess we could get proposals from the various 
"proposers" and vote on which model we favour for further investigation?

> I'm also not sure why the trademarks are in corporate hands when we 
> have established users groups that are certainly more objective.
I don't think that the user groups are legal entities are they? The 
registration of trademarks I think possibly predated the user groups as 
well.

Cheers
Rachel

-- 
-----------------------------
Rachel Hamilton-Williams
General Manager
Katipo Communications Ltd

Phone:  +64-4-934 1285
Mobile: 021 389 128
E-mail: rachel at katipo.co.nz
Web:    www.katipo.co.nz