Talk:Oversight Board/2009/Meeting Minutes-2009-12-11

In preparation for the trademark policy discussion

"I would take a step back even farther and think about all the different types of people you want to communicate with and what you want to communicate. Also you want to think about who you want to control and what actions you are trying to prevent."

We have a broad community to communicate to: free-software developers, classroom teachers, and parents being among the primary audience. What we have to communicate to this audience varies somewhat(and certainly the language we use to communicate must vary quite a bit) but isn't the essence of the message that we are a community trying to support the provision of a great learning platform to children? This platform has a core, but it is free to all to shape to their own needs. (An often articulated means towards our goal has been to distribute authority to "local labs" and grassroots groups--and, importantly, build a bridge between these groups.) However, there is a responsibility that comes with that freedom: you either need to build a sub-community to support your autonomy, or work within the framework provided by consensus within the community of Sugar developers and users, or work with the community to move them closer to your vision. The trademark policy should presumably demarcate these choices.

There are several (competing?) issues at stake here in regard to use of the Sugar/Sugar Labs name:

• we want clarity in regard to what is directly supported by the Sugar community vs what is supported by third parties who are catering to the specific needs of a deployment (which may, for example require a proprietary driver to support a school's hardware or some proprietary software or content to support a school's existing curricula goals; Carlo proposed a technical approach to such 'remixing" that may help frame the discussion); and
• we want clarity in regard to the language we use to make this distinction (our primary audience is not the FOSS community; terms such as "remix" are not going to be very meaningful); it may be that we always need to direct teachers and parents to third-party solution providers who can manage the deployment.