Fixing our trademark processes and policies
Ryan Ozimek
As President of OSM, and thereby the executive overseeing the Joomla! trademark policy, I want to apologize to our leadership team and the community as a whole. The current status of our trademark policy is not of the quality I expect from a project as well-respected as ours, and at the end of the day, the responsibility of ensuring its worthiness lies on my desk.
I want to take this opportunity to make something perfectly clear: the challenges we face in dealing with trademark concerns should not be blamed on any individual other than myself. There are good, well-intentioned individuals working hard as volunteers to help mitigate concerns and risks with respect to our trademark.
These volunteers are not the cause of the problem.
There may be communication challenges which we should overcome in handling trademark concerns, but these challenges can be overcome by strategic changes to our processes and the clear documentation of our trademark policy.
I humbly ask our community to understand that our Trademark Team volunteers are simply trying to do their best to interpret and execute our existing trademark policy. This, unfortunately, can be quite difficult.
If you have concerns, frustrations, or even anger at our trademark policies, please don’t aim them at individual volunteers or contributors. Work with us at OSM. We want to learn more about how we can fix things to make them better. We want to improve processes so that the word of Joomla can be spread far and wide, efficiently and effectively. I understand that we haven’t had a clear process for receiving input on trademark policy concerns, and we recognize that this is a top area of focus for us to fix.
To help us out, we’ve temporarily created an email address to receive your concerns until we have a better system in hand. If you have a concern, please write our Trademark Team at t...@opensourcematters.org to share your thoughts and potential process solutions. Concerns about processes can be most effectively handled when we have potential solutions to work with, as a problem paired with a potential solution has much more impact than just a problem.
At the OSM Summit a few weeks ago, we spent considerable time brainstorming the pain points that are faced with respect to the trademark processes and policies. Fixing this broken process is our top priority as a team, and a key measure of success for me as an executive in 2011.
With this in mind, I’ve asked our Acting Trademark Team Leader, Jacques Rentzke, to continue working as quickly as possible to improve our trademark policy’s documentation, volunteer support, examples, translation, and guidelines. I will personally be lending a hand in this process and providing oversight. I know that all members of OSM will be lending a hand as well.
A key goal of our trademark policy should be to find as many ways as possible to encourage community members to spread the word of Joomla far and wide. We should aim to build processes that make it as simple as possible to stay aligned with our policies, in an effort to protect the worldwide brand we as a community have worked so hard to uphold. If we keep these two tenants as our guideposts, I’m confident we’ll be successful.
In the meantime, I want to say thank you to our Trademark Team, our community volunteers around the world, and users of Joomla for being patient with us as we embark on this journey together. I look forward to providing you feedback as we move forward.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Jacques Rentzke
Thank you for stating so clearly where we are at, and what the
challenges are that we are facing.
It's a daunting task, and I have to take responsibility, and also
apologize for not moving ahead fast enough with changes to our processes
and documentation, since I accepted the role of Acting Trademark Team
Leader.
Thank you to the volunteers in the Trademark Team who work hard to
protect the Joomla Trademark & brand for the whole community.
I am confident that we can now get this great task done, with the help
of the Open Source Matters (OSM) board, as well as the Trademark Team
members, Joomla! Leadership teams, and the extended International Joomla
community!
For those who are not logged into Google, the email address that Ryan
mentioned is tm@ opensourcematters.org (remove the space after the @)
regards,
Jacques Rentzke
Secretary of the Board
Open Source Matters, Inc.
On 2011/08/26 08:12 PM, Ryan Ozimek wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As President of OSM, and thereby the executive overseeing the Joomla!
> trademark policy, I want to apologize to our leadership team and the
> community as a whole. The current status of our trademark policy is not
> of the quality I expect from a project as well-respected as ours, and at
> the end of the day, the responsibility of ensuring its worthiness lies
> on my desk.
>
> I want to take this opportunity to make something perfectly clear: the
> challenges we face in dealing with trademark concerns should not be
> blamed on any individual other than myself. There are good,
> well-intentioned individuals working hard as volunteers to help mitigate
> concerns and risks with respect to our trademark.
>
> These volunteers are not the cause of the problem.
>
> There may be communication challenges which we should overcome in
> handling trademark concerns, but these challenges can be overcome by
> strategic changes to our processes and the clear documentation of our
> trademark policy.
>
> I humbly ask our community to understand that our Trademark Team
> volunteers are simply trying to do their best to interpret and execute
> our existing trademark policy. This, unfortunately, can be quite difficult.
>
> If you have concerns, frustrations, or even anger at our trademark
> policies, please don�t aim them at individual volunteers or
> contributors. Work with us at OSM. We want to learn more about how we
> can fix things to make them better. We want to improve processes so that
> the word of Joomla can be spread far and wide, efficiently and
> effectively. I understand that we haven�t had a clear process for
> receiving input on trademark policy concerns, and we recognize that this
> is a top area of focus for us to fix.
>
> To help us out, we�ve temporarily created an email address to receive
> your concerns until we have a better system in hand. If you have a
> concern, please write our Trademark Team at t...@opensourcematters.org to
> share your thoughts and potential process solutions. Concerns about
> processes can be most effectively handled when we have potential
> solutions to work with, as a problem paired with a potential solution
> has much more impact than just a problem.
>
> At the OSM Summit a few weeks ago, we spent considerable time
> brainstorming the pain points that are faced with respect to the
> trademark processes and policies. Fixing this broken process is our top
> priority as a team, and a key measure of success for me as an executive
> in 2011.
>
> With this in mind, I�ve asked our Acting Trademark Team Leader, Jacques
> Rentzke, to continue working as quickly as possible to improve our
> trademark policy�s documentation, volunteer support, examples,
> translation, and guidelines. I will personally be lending a hand in this
> process and providing oversight. I know that all members of OSM will be
> lending a hand as well.
>
> A key goal of our trademark policy should be to find as many ways as
> possible to encourage community members to spread the word of Joomla far
> and wide. We should aim to build processes that make it as simple as
> possible to stay aligned with our policies, in an effort to protect the
> worldwide brand we as a community have worked so hard to uphold. If we
> keep these two tenants as our guideposts, I�m confident we�ll be successful.
>
> In the meantime, I want to say thank you to our Trademark Team, our
> community volunteers around the world, and users of Joomla for being
> patient with us as we embark on this journey together. I look forward to
> providing you feedback as we move forward.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ryan
>
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