[OSM-talk] OSMF Trademark Policy

[Jochen Topf]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 11:43:25AM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>    I've recently started a thread about a future OSMF trademark
> policy on the osmf-talk list, here
> 
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2012-December/001947.html
> 
> If you're not in the OSMF (and therefore not on osmf-talk), you're
> of course welcome to say your opinion too, e.g. on this list.

I think we first have to decide what we need this trademark policy for. Is it
only to protect against some existing (or future) problem? (If thats the case
what are the problems we have/think we will have?). Or is it to force some kind
of behaviour we want on top of mere protection? (What would that be? Maybe we
want everybody to link back to the OSM site or whatever, although the license
more or less demands this already.)

The comparison with OSGeo is not very helpful in my opinion. OSGeo is trying to
be a marketing and branding organization for Open Source software, but from the
outside it looks just like a few people doing the FOSS4G and the website with a
bunch of links to Open Source GIS software. That trademark is a lot less
interesting than OSM's.

OSM wants people to actually use OSM data and wants them to say that this is
OSM data. And we encourage mashups and innovative uses of OSM data. Thats very
different from usual trademarks. Disney doesn't like it if you use their mouse
for anything not approved by them. But we are the opposite, we want to be open.
So we have to tread very very lightly here, otherwise there might be people who
can't use OSM any more. The disaster with Firefox being renamed on Debian comes
to mind. Especially some arbitrary and non-public process where you have to
apply somewhere to get official approval for whatever you want to do with OSM
data is very problematic.

And I think we want to encourage not only private use, but also a commercial
eco-system around and on top of OSM. Anything that makes commercial use of OSM
more difficult is probably not a good idea. It is hard enough to make money
with Open Source and Open Data as it is.

I am personally interested in this issue. I have a web site using the domain
OpenStreetMapData.com. Currently I only ask for donations there (and made the
huge sum of 25 EUR minus paypal fees in the last 9 months or so), but I am
planning to expand the services offered. The domain name choice was very
deliberate. Having "OpenStreetMap" in the domain gives you a much better
standing when people search on Google. The .com should make people understand
that it is a commercial enterprise. And I tried to make very sure on the site
that people understood that this is a different thing than the project web
site. I think this is a very reasonable use of the OpenStreetMap name, if
the OSMF doesn't think so please tell me now. :-)

After years and years of uncertainty with the license blocking commercial
development of OSM, because people didn't know whether their business model
would work with the new license, I hope that this will not become another
monster, that keeps people from using OSM. Because, after all, thats what we
created OSM for, to be used.

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298