Re: GNOME starts campaign to protect its trademarks

[Fabiano Fidêncio <fabiano fidencio org>]

Howdy,

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Tobias Mueller <muelli cryptobitch de> wrote:
> GNOME has launched a campaign¹ to raise funds for protecting the GNOME trademarks.
>
> Recently, Groupon launched Gnome², a tablet-based point of sale (POS) system that
> Groupon describes as a “platform” and an “operating system”.
>
> The GNOME Foundation is concerned and sees their long-established mark for Free
> Software, GNOME, endangered. The GNOME Foundation asks for ideological and
> monetary support to cover the costs of opposing the marks Groupon applied to
> register, which were estimated to be around 80,000 USD.
>
> “I cannot believe Groupon was not aware of GNOME, the Free Software desktop
> environment and application suite, when it chose the name. Especially as they
> claim to be ‘fueled by open source‘³,” said Tobias Mueller, one of the directors
> of the GNOME Foundation.
>
> “We will not give up and fight their use of our name which we have established
> over the last 17 years to provide users all over the world with high quality
> Free Software solutions.”
>
> “Millions of people who use GNU/Linux based systems use GNOME or GNOME-related
> technologies, such as GLib or GTK+. We must not let a billion-dollar-company
> take the well-established name of one of the biggest Free Software communities,”
> Tobias added. “If you want to help GNOME defend its trademark and promote Free
> Software, visit the campaign’s page¹, share the link, and let Groupon know that
> they behaved terribly”.
>
> GNOME also made a press contact⁴ available for further questions or interviews.
>
>
> 1: http://www.gnome.org/groupon/
> 2: http://investor.groupon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=848707
> 3: https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/open-source/sharing-is-caring-open-source-at-groupon/
> 4: mailto:groupon gnome org
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-list mailing list
> foundation-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list

I'd like to raise two suggestions here.
1) I have the feeling that people would feel more welcome to donate if
they could see how much money was already donated for this cause/how
many people have already contributed. So, if Foundation could expose
this info would be awesome for attracting more donations.
2) I understand that 80K USD are the estimated amount of money needed.
But what can Foundation do if the amount raised is less than this?
Does Foundation have goals/clear idea about how to proceed if we can
just raise 40K USD? Clear goals, even if Foundation doesn't raise the
necessary amount is, IMHO, also that would help for attracting more
donations.

Best Regards,
-- 
Fabiano Fidêncio