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> Either way, it's interesting to see committees and foundations going for these sorts of power grabs. I really hate thinking of this sort of stuff as a power

> Either way, it's interesting to see committees and foundations going for these sorts of power grabs. I really hate thinking of this sort of stuff as a power grab. Unlike copyright, trademarks are something that is useful for the consumer/user. I want to know whether something is official or not, and throwing a trademark around ruins that. For uses of trademarks that make it clear that they are not official uses, it doesn't even matter what the trademark owner's policy is because they don't have a legal leg to stand on. People have the right to refer to you no matter what you think. That being said, when you're not talking about FOSS stuff, people have the right to pull your licensing if you don't abide by their policies. But when it's FOSS, there's nothing they can do about it. There is nothing to any of these FOSS foundations other than their trademarks. They exist to decide what they approve of and what they disapprove of, and allowing the mark is how they make that clear. You can fork everything that they have, change "Rust" to "Bust," register the "Bust Foundation," and name yourself president, all in the same day. The Bust Foundation will be no less legitimately a steward of the code than the Rust Foundation. But I'll be sticking with the Rust Foundation, at least for now, and the mark helps me do that.

jchw 2y ago
It sounds like a powergrab to me, but there's some nuance to it. Look at it this way: > Your materials for the event must not imply that the event is officially endorsed or run by the Rust Project or Rust Foundation unless you have written permission. You can't imply an event is official without permission. Very reasonable. Not a powergrab. This is the same sort of thing that Firefox does to prevent modified versions of Firefox from being called Firefox. > For commercial events (including sponsored ones), please check in with us. But then there's this. This implies that there are extra rules for an event that is "commercial" even if it does not try to pretend to be an official event; merely using the trademark and being a commercial event would compel you to adhere to some other set of rules, which they didn't even write in the policy. On its face, that doesn't sound unreasonable, but I imagine the net cast over what counts as "commercial events" probably makes very few reasonable events possible that wouldn't fall under this umbrella. It's an interesting choice in my opinion.

jchw 2y ago

It sounds like a powergrab to me, but there's some nuance to it. Look at it this way: > Your materials for the event must not imply that the event is officially endorsed or run by the Rust Project or Rust Foundation unless you have written permission. You can't imply an event is official without permission. Very reasonable. Not a powergrab. This is the same sort of thing that Firefox does to prevent modified versions of Firefox from being called Firefox. > For commercial events (including sponsored ones), please check in with us. But then there's this. This implies that there are extra rules for an event that is "commercial" even if it does not try to pretend to be an official event; merely using the trademark and being a commercial event would compel you to adhere to some other set of rules, which they didn't even write in the policy. On its face, that doesn't sound unreasonable, but I imagine the net cast over what counts as "commercial events" probably makes very few reasonable events possible that wouldn't fall under this umbrella. It's an interesting choice in my opinion.