[OSM-legal-talk] Trademark applications

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Peter Miller wrote:
> Saying 'bombarded' is hardly fair. For the record I email the board on 
> the 23rd Dec and received no reply. I emailed again on the 8th Jan 
> requesting a response to my earlier email and threatening to object the 
> following day. I had a response but it was not clear. I requested 
> clarification on the 13th (no reply), again on the 17th (no reply) and 
> so today we objected to the application on about the last day that it 
> was safe to do so given the deadline of the 21st Jan. I did finally get 
> a list of applications from the team today but only after we informed 
> them of our actions. I used that information as the basis of the 
> TradeMark article to which I referred earlier.

In a variation of the well-known "Hanlon's razor" I'm tempted to assume 
that rather than deliberately keeping information from you (and the 
members), the lack of communication might be due to other priorities 
and/or possibly less-than-well-defined responsibilities, or maybe a lack 
of professionalism (something that I would not hold against the OSMF 
board since they haven't to my knowledge ever claimed to be, or were 
elected on the assumption they are, administration professionals).

That being said, I'd hate to think a potential sponsor might ever get 
the same impression of being neglected that you have!

Sometimes in an organziation it is not enough to say who is responsible 
for which area of business but it may also be required to make sure the 
others will take over responsibilities (or at least answer E-Mails) if 
the person in charge is unwilling or unable.

I remember there was a guy a few months ago who loudly complained about 
some E-Mail of his not having been answered by CloudMade, and in return 
Nick said something along the lines of they're trying but sometimes 
things get overlooked, and Nick asked for recommendations of suitable 
ticket systems to deal with inquiries. Maybe CloudMade have investigated 
this and meanwhile settled on a system, and are willing to share their 
know-how with the Foundation board so the same software can be used for 
OSMF business? The advantage would then be that half the board already 
know how to use it ;-)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"