Request for new "Jenkins" mark usage

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

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Nov 5, 2014, 1:39:03 PM11/5/14
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Jenkins project necessitates that when a 3rd party uses the name "Jenkins" it would have to get a blessing from the project meeting.

In the past, we've established that "Jenkins Foo by AcmeCorp" is generally an acceptable pattern. CloudBees has gotten several approvals that match this convention, such as Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees.

In this post, I'm requesting that we bless "AcmeCorp Jenkins Foo" as a generally acceptable pattern. And specifically, CloudBees want to get an approval for the following patterns:
  • CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
  • CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center
  • CloudBees Jenkins Analytics
With my OSS hat on, I think our guiding principle in the past name usage approval is that the use does not cause confusions among users as to the source of the effort/product. This is the same with other organizations. See what Apache says on this topic. There are a numerous other examples of names that fit this convention in other open-source projects, such as HP Helion OpenStack, Piston OpenStack, CollabNet Subversion Edge, Red Hat Enterprise Linux just to name a few.

I also think a policy that's not overly restrictive to the participants, even for commercial entities, helps the community grow faster. While commercial interest to an OSS project is always seen bit suspiciously, especially in this project given the past with Oracle, the participation from companies like CloudBees, Praqma, and Red Hat helped in many ways, ranging from putting more developers to event organizations. Linux is a good example of this, which enabled a lot of participations & adoptions. This was always my mental model for Jenkins, and one that fits with the open-ended plugin ecosystem in Jenkins.

I had some conversation with Andrew and Dean about this topic, and we felt that the next step is to bring this to here for a wider discussion. 

Dean wanted to make sure (and I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth here) that we aren't bending rules and principles just because it came from CloudBees, as CloudBees is a big player in this community. And I agree --- we should be just as happy to accept "Oracle Jenkins Cloud", "Microsoft Jenkins Cluster", or whatever, in principle.

So there it is. Your thoughts and feedbacks appreciated. I'm hoping that we can get this officially approved soon.

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

nicolas de loof

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Nov 5, 2014, 1:57:53 PM11/5/14
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I won't comment on this topic as being a CloudBees employee and let the community debate this.

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Slide

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Nov 5, 2014, 1:59:52 PM11/5/14
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This is completely off of what you are looking for, but I couldn't resist, in the case of Microsoft, it would be "Microsoft Jenkins Cloud Cluster Enterprise Framework 4.5"

Stephen Connolly

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Nov 5, 2014, 2:05:41 PM11/5/14
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Removing my CloudBees hat for this comment.

Has the jenkins project got legal advice wrt opening up this new "convention"?

The concern here is protecting the mark. I know for maven we had some discussion and agreed (as a PMC) to permit the usage ___ maven plugin but not maven ___ plugin provided it was in the context of a plugin for maven itself... (Not sure how to handle jenkins' evil plugin btw)

I cannot recall whether there was a legal reason for the distinction or whether we just wanted to open up the minimum so that we retained freedom to open up more in a considered fashion

Puts CloudBees hat back on
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teilo

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Nov 5, 2014, 2:37:08 PM11/5/14
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IMHO xxx jenkins bar really looses the Jenkins and dilutes the mark.

'Xxx bar for Jenkins' I think would be cleaner and make it more separate from jenkins.

My 2p.

Dean Yu

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Nov 5, 2014, 4:43:14 PM11/5/14
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Kohsuke linked to ASF's guidelines for use of their trademarks, but I think the section above the guidelines is more relevant:


In particular, I would call out this sentence (emphasis added):

To avoid infringing ASF's marks, you should verify that your use of our marks is nominative and that you are not likely to confuse software consumers that your software is the same as ASF's software or is endorsed by ASF.

My concern is that the pattern "AcmeCorp Jenkins Foo", when used by CloudBees, will cause confusion among users about the source of the Jenkins project. This is unfair to CloudBees, but consider that Kohsuke and many of the most active community members are now employed by CloudBees. Consider that CloudBees recently changed their entire business model to focus on an enterprise product based on Jenkins. Both of these factors increase the likelihood of confusion.

  -- Dean


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Richard Bywater

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Nov 5, 2014, 5:01:49 PM11/5/14
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Are the three Cloudbees products standalone or do they sit on top of Jenkins? I'm wondering if they are standalone whether the "powered by" type approach is more appropriate? (i.e. you've got your product name - CloudBees Enterprise - and its powered under the hood by Jenkins)

Richard.

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

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Nov 5, 2014, 10:46:12 PM11/5/14
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JEbC and JOCbC are both Jenkins + a bunch of plugins.

Thanks for the suggestion about "Acme FooBar powered by Jenkins." That one squarely falls under the nominative use, so I believe it is indeed safe. But in this case that is not the name the company wants, so I'm not pushing for that one here.

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

Kohsuke Kawaguchi

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Nov 6, 2014, 2:20:19 AM11/6/14
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Thank you, Dean.

I think your underlying concern is that CloudBees and Jenkins are "inextricably linked" because of CB's deep involvement in the project, or to put more bluntly, a concern that some people might perceive the Jenkins project as a CloudBees project, when it isn't. That is indeed something we the project has been careful about. And on this I have two points that I want to make.

First, the test in question here is whether a CloudBees product (CloudBees Jenkins FooBarZot) would make people think that it is an authentic official "product" from the Jenkins community project. That is a confusion that goes in the other direction from your concern, which is about people thinking that Jenkins is from CloudBees. Put differently, I don't think I'm hearing from you that "AcmeCorp Jenkins FooBar" can confuse users that it is from (or the same as) the Jenkins project and not from AcmeCorp.

Second, as a creator of the project that far predates the birth of CloudBees, and as a person who has gone through the whole Hudson/Jenkins split, the well-being of the Jenkins project is very important for me. And I think CloudBees has been respecting the project's independence very much. The trademark is with SPI, the decision making process is in the project meeting and the board, and we sign the same CLA. To the best of my knowledge, we've made CloudBees live by every rule we set for everyone. If CloudBees have failed to do that, I will try to correct those. But here, I think you are saying that actually "AcmeCorp Jenkins FooBar" would have been fine if AcmeCorp is not CloudBees but something else --- say Oracle, Praqma, or some such. It's one thing to be shot down for asking a favor for being a big contributor. But this is about getting penalized for being a big contributor. That's reverse meritocracy!


In addition, if I may make an utilitarian argument, as an OSS project we should "use" commercial interests to our advantages. This isn't a zero sum game; when we make it easier for companies to contribute and get involved in the project, we the project benefit, in terms of faster growth, more features, etc. I've long held that view, and that's why our license is MIT license, not GPL. This mark usage request is really nothing more than a simple reflection of the "hey, Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees is really mouthful" feeling (and probably a bit of desire to emphasize the "CloudBees" part, I'd imagine.) If there's a growing concern about the role CloudBees is playing in this project, I'm happy to have that conversation. But it really feels like somewhat separate from the specific question at hand here.

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

Owen Mehegan

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Nov 20, 2014, 8:25:32 PM11/20/14
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I polled a few of my coworkers, and asked them what these three names indicate to them:

Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees
CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
Jenkins

Everyone agreed that, in that context, it's clear that Jenkins is a stand-alone thing, and Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees is a version of Jenkins made by a company/group named CloudBees. But CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise left them a little vague on where the heavy lifting was happening (my word choice). I also raised the convention of e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and people agreed that that naming makes it clear that it's Linux + Red Had secret sauce, rather than Red Hat something or other with Linux mixed in. Given that, they would not feel confused by CloudBees Enterprise Jenkins. I don't exactly know why this is - just something in the brain when you read these things.

This jibes with my instinct as well. It's nothing to do with CloudBees - I fully support Kohsuke's point that it's important not to discourage commercial involvement with the product. But I think, to put it another way, Oracle Enterprise Jenkins sounds better than Oracle Jenkins Enterprise (is it Oracle Jenkins, different from regular Jenkins?).

My 2 cents.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi

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Nov 21, 2014, 5:37:38 AM11/21/14
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First, I'd like to take this opportunity to update the list about the conversation. We spent some time during the last project discussing about this, which you can find here

Because there was no obvious consensus, people at the meeting felt that we wanted feedbacks from more people.

We want to make a final decision on this in the next meeting, one way or the other. If you have any thoughts/opinions/votes/etc, please send them in by then.



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Jan Seidel

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Nov 21, 2014, 11:01:12 AM11/21/14
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Hi all,

I for sure wouldn't like to stall companies especially if it also has a benefit for our community but I still favor to make it clear that the products they sell is based on Jenkins.
It is easy, especially when you are new to Jenkins, to end up on commercial sites like CloudBee - it did also happen to me ;)

So for that reason I would prefer patterns like:
  • company product powered by Jenkins
  • Jenkins product by company

It would not guarantee that there is no chance to misunderstand the relations but in most cases it should be quite obvous.

my five cents
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