Re: Agenda for board meeting on July 7th

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 3:17 AM, Josh Triplett <josh joshtriplett org> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 09:04:52PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
>    > * https://kickstarter.com/projects/technoruninc/stratos/
>
> What is the relationship between this and GNOME?

None whatsoever, other than that their mockups appear to depict GNOME,
which is part of why it needs investigation.

The bottom of the page says"StratOS is based and built upon a modified Linux Kernel and sports a modified version of the Gnome Desktop Environment." so that would explain why the screenshots look familiar.

I guess that would not have to necessarily mean that licensing or trademarks were being violated but hopefully the licensing experts among us can clarify any concerns there might be on that front.

> I see two problems in the kickstarter page.  The smaller, superficial
> problem is that it says "Linux" and means GNU.  If they would like our
> support, we should insist they change that.

I'm much less concerned about whether they want GNOME's *support* (as it
seems rather unlikely either that they'd seek such support or that we'd
offer it), and more concerned about whether they're actually acting in
good faith or whether they might be doing something that will actively
damage the reputations of Linux, GNU, GNOME, and other Free Software
projects.

I just can't see how anyone who really was already familiar with free software projects like GNOME, GNU et al would consider donating to this kickstarter so, I am not sure how in practical terms this kickstarter could damage our reputation. Even at face value, the project looks like a kid trying to flog a product he "took" from projects like ours and maybe modified a bit.

Personally, the main thing that makes me most curious/suspicious about this is that the project has actually managed to raise a 5 figure sum towards its total already and it's not even been well marketed (imho), but that's just me.

Ultimately, if we find that neither our licensing nor trademark is being violated is there really anything we can or should do to try control what people want to do with our software?

Magdalen