[IAEP] Sugar Labs Individual Membership

[Greg Dekoenigsberg]

On Fri, 12 Sep 2008, Jim Gettys wrote:

> Fedora is still a Red Hat trademark.
>
> That leaves Red Hat at least somewhat legally responsible.
>
> The CLA has caused serious heartburn for some (e.g. Bert Freudenburg)
> and I've been on his side in that (because the issues he sees could have
> applied to me in previous years).  RH/Fedora is revising the CLA now;
> I've seen a copy, but the copy I saw still had some of these issues from
> where I sit (I sent a lengthy reply to the RH lawyer working on it).
>
> For certain people, it is *very* off-putting....
>
> All the projects I've been involved with have not had such agreements:
> Gnome, X.org Foundation (as opposed to some of its predecessors), etc.

It's all a matter of perceived risk, and mitigation strategies for those 
risks.

The risk to Red Hat of seeing the Fedora trademark abused is very 
expensive.  The legal risk to Red Hat of someone putting "stolen" code 
into Fedora is very expensive.

The risks for a smaller project, with frankly no money to speak of, are 
less.  Not nothing, but less.

/me wonders if someone shouldn't be asking the friendly folks at the SFLC 
for a bit of advice.

--g