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[RFH] answering trademark@d.o inquiries



[ Mail-Followup-To: -project ]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 12:57:40PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> This policy states that the contact for trademark questions is
> trademark@debian.org.  Where does this address go?  I think it's important
> for transparency that the responsible parties be listed on
> <http://www.debian.org/intro/organization>; I can't tell if this is an alias
> for leader@, or a team, or what.  (/etc/aliases on master mentions it going
> to leader@, but this entry is commented out.)

Right, thanks for asking.

Short answer: trademark@d.o is at present an alias for leader@d.o.

The story goes that, in the past, the trademark policy used to point
directly to leader@d.o for inquiries. I think that is not scalable and
also unwise, as 1-year DPL terms account for very little memory about
procedures, trademark knowledge, etc.  So a group of people answering
trademark inquiries might be useful. That group should *also* include
the DPL, as giving specific trademark licenses is an action on Debian
assets; but other inquiries (e.g. "is this nominative use?") can easily
be answered by others.

Creating trademark@d.o has simply been a first step toward that goal.

Now, the next step is finding other people willing to help with those
inquiries and add them behind those alias. It would also be appropriate
to have some RT queue for it, to avoid losing track of requests
(something which happens way to often with other mail aliases that are
not associated to any sort of BTS).

So: anyone up to help with this?  The load is very light: in 2012 we've
received only 16 requests. Still, it is important to reply promptly and
professionally to them.  The requirements to help are some minimal
familiarity with trademark law --- "minimal" because all non-obvious
cases should better be routed to SPI legal support.

Regarding documentation on www.d.o/intro/organization of who is behind
trademark@d.o: sure, that's a good idea. Patches/commits welcome :-)

Thanks in advance,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

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