New draft of the Drupal Trademark Policy

Here are some comments as I was reading through. As a side note, something about the way that the PDF was exported makes it nigh impossible to copy/paste sections of it for discussion here, at least in Preview.app. :( Is there any way to fix that? Also, if these bullets were numbered/lettered, it'd make them a lot easier to refer to in clarifying questions/comments.

Page 1, first paragraph:

...cooperates with the Drupal Association and local non-profit associations to foster...

What does this bit mean? It this "local" Drupal Association branches, or something like "Drupalcon, Inc." that holds money for the Association, or is this "Open Source Teachers Union" who want to cite Drupal as one of the technologies they teach, or..?

Page 1, bullet 1 under "How to obtain a license?"

The "for example" sections below the other bullet points are very helpful. I think this one needs it too. Possibly:

For example, a contributor wishes to start a website called drupalbeginners.com, with helpful tutorials aimed at people new to Drupal. Because this site contains Amazon Associate ads, the author would normally be subject to a license grant procedure. However, they are instead granted an automatic license because the referral code they use is these ads is the Drupal Association's, and any money earned goes directly to support the Drupal project.

(I assume that's what you mean here anyway. Feel free to tweak. For example, I don't really like mentioning specific services here.)

This might be a slippery slope, but should we also elaborate on what "foster" means? It's a little vague right now... for example, Lullabot wrote a commercial book, which fosters the Drupal software by spreading adoption and drawing in new contributors. And the money earned from that (or at least the portion not taken by the book publisher) goes to pay for the authors' food/rent/etc., so that we can further "foster" the Drupal software through our direct personal and professional contributions. So we get an automatic license, right? ;) (KIDDING!) But you see what I mean. Without something more explicit, people are going to draw their own conclusions as to whether they are eligible for automatic inclusion or not.

Page 2, bullet 3:

I'm not quite clear on why OLPC printing the Drupal trademark on its laptops is something we want to encourage carte blanche. What if I also print the Drupal trademark on my line of Evil Death Rays or Car Jacking Kits? If you're going to cite OLPC as an example, maybe be more clear on why that's a good thing to put the Drupal trademark on Product X, and how to tell if your Product Y falls under the same category. Is it because OLPC is a non-profit or because it's spreading free software adoption or..?

Also, it's not clear here to me whether both OLPC and the New York Drupal User Group would need to apply for a license, and the text is indicating that they would receive "a successful examination," or whether they are exempt based on the previous sections. I would maybe change these to:

"Examples of not "exclusively to foster the Drupal software," which must follow a license grant procedure: ..."

"Examples of "exclusively to foster the Drupal software," which are granted an automatic license: ..."

Page 2, last bullet:

I read that big glomp of blue text here (and the text above it) at least 3 times and I still have no idea what it means. What happened to the simple, easy-to-follow examples from before?

Is this basically saying you can name your course "Novell Drupal Certification" but not "Drupal Certification"? If so, the "domain name" clause makes it fuzzy, because just above you said you couldn't register "drupalinc.com." So "novelldrupal.com" would be okay..?

Sorry, I'd like to offer constructive suggestions here but I don't quite understand what's being communicated.

Page 3, bullet 1
Ok, well this makes a lot more sense now. Can we somehow flip the order of these so that the "automatic" list comes before the "apply for license" list? And I still think that the "apply for license" list needs some more explicit examples like we have here.

However, there's some ambiguity here:

drupalunofficialfaq.com is okay? What if it's a commercial website where the money goes to the site author and not the Drupal Association?

Page 3, bullet 2
Make sure to mention here again that under no circumstances is it okay to call any event, whether it fosters Drupal or not, a "Drupal Conference/Drupal con" without explicit approval. You have this already under "The license grant procedure must always be followed when" but if I wasn't reading closely, I might think that this stuff supercedes the stuff previous since it comes later (and I might assume later information was more specific).

Page 3, bullet 3
Good to see a book example in here, since these are becoming more commonplace. However, it's not clear to me at all the difference between the "automatic" and the "grant procedure" titles, apart from the obvious "Official Drupal X" one. Why does "Drupal Reference Guide" require a grant procedure, but "Drupal Bible" does not?

Page 3, 2nd paragraph under "The license grant procedure"
They can reapply as many times as they like? Are you sure you want to subject yourself to that? ;) We do have more than a couple people who flit in and out of the Drupal community known for stirring up trouble just for the sake of it.

Page 4, bulleted list

"is priced and packaged in ways that make it highly affordable and accessible to a broad audience"

This one seems a bit funny to me. I think it's overstepping bounds as trademark holder for you to dictate to other companies what their pricing schemes should be. Some would argue that Acquia's support network is too expensive, others might argue that Lullabot's workshops are too expensive, etc. Yet I'm sure that in both cases, the companies have done careful analysis of how to balance covering costs and keep their employees with jobs. It seems like pricing is a decision best left up to the business providing the service, who know their internal costs and financial targets, no?

"is created by significant contributors to the Drupal project" / "is created by those with a track record of giving back"

This one is a bit confusing too. Is this an attempt to justify why you might approve license use for Person/Group A, but might deny it for Person/Group B, or is it saying that one must contribute to the Drupal project in order to get a license grant? If this list is intended to be a "factors considered may include some or all of the following.." I think that should be more clear in the paragraph above this list. Right now, it reads "the following factors will be taken into account." If it's intended to be "you must follow all of these guidelines," then we should word the paragraph above that more strongly. If it's intentionally vague to give you some play here, I would say we should still play with that paragraph a bit so that's clear.

Page 4, 2nd bullet after Rules of Use
Maybe clarify that although drupal-is-worthless.com would be a trademark violation, it's perfectly fine to create a blog post on some-domain.com that points out Drupal's flaws. You already said this under "nominative fair use" but that was a long time ago. Maybe all that's needed is:

Example: a domain name "drupal-is-worthless.com." Note that nominative fair use, described earlier in this document, applies to any website content expressing negative opinions about Drupal, as long as this is done on a domain that does not contain the Drupal trademark.

That still isn't perfect -- obviously, it's fine to post a rant about how much Drupal sucks on drupal.org -- but I think it's important to clarify what the issue is. It's not saying mean stuff about Drupal, it's using the Drupal trademark to advertise it.

Page 4, last paragraph
Typo:

The Drupal trademarks is...

Should be:

The Drupal trademark is...

Also, could you clarify whether even those who receive an "automatic" license need to follow this rule? I imagine they do, but since the last part of this document was focused solely on those who need to apply, it would be good to reiterate here that both are required to display this text.

Page 5, bullet 4:
Could we clarify what "notice published on the Drupal website (drupal.org)" means? Drupal.org is a big website. ;P Will it be on the front page, will it be in this group on groups.drupal.org?

Page 3, bullet 3
Good to see a book example in here, since these are becoming more commonplace. However, it's not clear to me at all the difference between the "automatic" and the "grant procedure" titles, apart from the obvious "Official Drupal X" one. Why does "Drupal Reference Guide" require a grant procedure, but "Drupal Bible" does not?

The book titles were also probably the most confusing part to me.

Overall, it's pretty readable, and I think it's well on the way to being something thant any user should be able to read and understand. Are there plans to translate it into different languages?

I'm not sure I get Section III, bullet 2. It seems to be a bit unclear as to what it's aiming towards. I can't use the trademark to negatively impact open source software, but I can for closed source? Of course, that's part of what we do in Drupal promotion, but it seems to be a bit arbitrary to be included in the trademark policy. Examples:

"drupal-makes-joomla-worthless.com" vs
"drupal-makes-sharepoint-worthless.com".

Obviously it would be up to the other trademark owners to pursue as well, but it looks like the second one would be allowed by the policy. Perhaps

The Drupal trademark cannot be used for illegal, defamatory or humiliating purposes, or any other purpose that may negatively impact the Drupal software.

is all that's needed.

I want your raw and unfiltered thoughts so I'm going to refrain from answering your questions at this point, and let more feedback flow in. Keep it coming! :)

I really appreciate the amount of thought that's gone into this draft so far, and the goals of protecting the mark from misuse or dilution while still allowing the community and commercial entities to use it to promote Drupal. I do agree with the concerns raised by webchick and tgeller that the current draft doesn't do enough to define what "fostering" the Drupal software means and doesn't mean, but I also have larger concerns that there's several grey areas that could lead to confusion and/or make enforcement of the policy very difficult.

As Tom put it in his post, one approach is to tightly restrict usage of the mark so that almost everyone would requires explicit permission/licensing from you and/or your assigned agent, which would require a fair amount of effort/policing by you and/or the Association.

Another approach is that taken by Linus Torvalds and the Linux Foundation ( http://www.linuxmark.org/ ), who only require explicit licensing if someone offers a service or product that includes the word "Linux", and allow most other uses of the mark under fair use, as long as they meet standard attribution requirements for registered marks (i.e., including the ® character after the first prominent appearance of the mark and including a line somewhere that reads "Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries."). To me, this approach would seem to be a more applicable and easily enforced strategy than trying to either tightly control all usage of the mark or require case-by-case restrictions that aren't accompanied by copious amounts of legalese.

While I think it's important to require a license in some cases, I think the "automatic license" procedure and standards outlined in the policy are unclear and subject to abuse. I'd either remove this completely or increase its specificity to require a license grant for some of these items.

A lot of what you're trying to prevent in the policy is already prevented by trademark law, at least in the United States, which for various reasons should probably be the jurisdictional standard that you use. People are not allowed to use your mark in a way that confuses others about the origin of the goods and/or services they're providing, which addresses the question of an "official link", for example.

Other items you're trying to prevent may not be legally preventable, as Tom points out in his post, you can't stop people from registering drupalisworthless.com, for example, if they're actually using it for a site that criticizes Drupal. My concern is that by putting these kinds of requirements in the official policy, you may end up with a document that gets completely gutted the first time someone decides to challenge it in court, and ends up being unenforceable.

I also have some smaller concerns that you may have issues trying to enforce how the mark is used in the title of a book, seminar or course, (especially if its in an academic setting or otherwise intended to educate people about Drupal, as this would likely be considered fair use), and that the policy you have proposed for using the Drupal name for conferences and conventions vs. camps and meetups is confusing.

And finally, I think the disclaimer text you're proposing is overly long and unwieldy. As I mentioned above, the Linux Foundation just requires the use of the ® character and a statement that says its a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries, which honestly is all I think you need. I don't think you need to specify which organizations are responsible for enforcing the mark, or suggest that it's being used with your explicit permission, especially if it's not (which would be true under the "automatic license" use case).

Please pay close attention the policies concerning word combinations such as "DrupalCamp" and the use of domain names like drupal.es. These are potential problems and may require active policing of the names and acquisition of domain names.

Combined names may be simple to fix by alerting the user of the policies. But domain names may require more readiness as the domain fees and country policies concerning ownership will have to be followed ie. residency. Sun and Microsoft both actively pursue acquisition of tld domain names and only allow use of them by the trademark holder. But this may be a bit difficult to do in the case of Drupal and Joomla.

What about people planning to launch Drupal related publications and services while the trademark policy is still not finished? We run the risk of having our licenses (if we'll need them, which can change in the later drafts) rejected. In this regard, I can't be sure if I should register my projects with drupalanything.com?

This thread should have a link to the final trademark policy: http://www.drupal.com/trademark