Status GCE images and trademark (was Please let's not talk about "clouds")
On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jkaplowitz@google.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 09:56:31AM -0700, Clint Byrum wrote:
>> > The trademark policy is not clear on describing things which contain
>> > Debian itself. If HPCS adds a special super whiz-bang open source but
>> > HP cloud only thing to the images, its not clear that they can or
>> > cannot call that Debian still. It would be good for the project to
>> > make the policy on images clear at http://www.debian.org/trademark .
>>
>> I agree with that. In fact: the "public cloud market place" scenario was
>> one of the motivating factor for revamping the trademark policy, even if
>> in the end we didn't end up detailing that specific use case (we
>> probably should). This is mainly because until very recently we didn't
>> have much concrete evidence of "official" Debian images to benchmark
>> against.
>>
>> Note, however, that the trademark policy does offer a sane default: in
>> case of doubt, you should ask permission before calling your image
>> "Debian".
>
>
> I'm glad I'm reading this thread - it's definitely something I'll want
> to follow up on for Google's images as well, since they do add three
> debs specific to the Google Compute Engine environment, as well as
> Google's gsutil and gcutil tools via tarballs extracted sensibly under
> /usr/local. All of them are free software under the Apache License
> 2.0. The images we've put into the debian-cloud project so far have
> been uploaded by a Debian developer - namely me - and we arranged
> things explicitly so that non-Googler DDs can be granted the access to
> upload official images.
Jimmy,
James Bromberger, a DD was is an employee of Amazon, is currently
solely responsible for maintaining the "official" EC2 images. He does
this with his "Debian hat" on.
I believe, if you were willing to maintain the GCE images yourself,
with or without other DDs helping you, you should be able to work out
an arrangement that you are the (or one of the) maintainer(s) of
"Official Debian images" for GCE. From reading back through email
archives, it's clear that there is an expectation that DDs need to
build and maintain "Official" images.
If you wanted to follow this route there are still a couple of bugs
that probably should be filed and addressed:
1) Custom kernel required -- I don't know if this is a show stopper
bug, or perhaps it could be addressed in the mean time by a custom GCE
kernel package that is included in Debian, and built and mantained by
DDs.
2) Packages being created for the tools required to handle instance
instantiation.
I you went this route, I don't believe any special trademark request
would need to be submitted, but I would follow up with leader@ to
confirm the process and requirements. (This is all pretty new, so if
anyone on this list has any thoughts, they should feel free to share.)
However, if you wanted to publish images with your Google hat on, and
have other Googlers who aren't DDs helping you, and call these images
"Debian", then you'd likely want to have someone write to trademark@
and submit a use request. (Since this falls into the "when in doubt"
clause of the TM policy.) These would not be "Official images" but
it's probable that your team would be granted usage rights to the
Debian TM.
My suggestion, since everything seems to be in place to allow
non-Googlers to upload images, would be a new thread calling for DD
volunteers to help you build and maintain images, as I think all would
benefit if there were only "official debian images" for GCE. (You
could also try jobs@d.o, if you wanted to widen your net for potential
volunteers.)
Cheers,
Brian
> is a clarification to the trademark policy planned, or should I have
> someone email trademarks@ on behalf of Google to confirm permission
> before any broader announcement? We're hoping to make a couple of
> announcements mentioning these images in the next several weeks (I'll
> say more about that in a different thread).
>
> - Jimmy
>
>
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