Trademark Sublicensing Request: DevOps World - Jenkins World

[Kohsuke Kawaguchi]

On behalf of CloudBees, I’d like to request the permission to use the following name that uses ‘Jenkins’ in it:

• DevOps World - Jenkins World

This is the new name of the event that we've been calling "Jenkins World", which is a previously approved mark, and needless to say, many of you have been there in the past several years. I think all the basic considerations led to the approval of Jenkins World still applies. I’ve put this up as an agenda for April 11th project meeting to be able to get a decision there. If you have any concerns or objections, please chime in on this thread prior to the meeting, so that we can address them.

Now, related but separately from the trademark sub-licensing request, I think this event name change naturally raises the question of "what does this change mean?", so let me describe how I see it as positive change.

Over the years, Jenkins has become more and more widespread and mainstream in every corner of the software development world. At the same time, the problems solved by Jenkins is increasingly seen not as an isolated problem of build/test/deploy/etc, but as a part of a bigger problem space of Continuous Delivery and DevOps.

The content of the past few Jenkins Worlds reflect this shift. There were many deep Jenkins talks that were very popular, like this or that, but there are also other great sessions that discussed this broader problem space, like this or that.

So in order for the name to represent the substance more accurately, as the event producer, CloudBees decided that it would like to rename the event to “DevOps World - Jenkins World.” This way, the event can appeal to both those who are deep in Jenkins and those who are approaching this more broadly. It will help Jenkins be seen as the key piece of this landscape for the latter audience. While the word “DevOps” might feel ambiguous and fuzzy for those of us deep in technology, the event team has done various research to conclude that it is used more and to refer to this broad area than other terms, thereby making it the best choice. There are some other conferences that follow similar "AX - BX" naming patterns, like this one, presumably for similar reasons.

In terms of how the event will be actually produced, I have heard that it will not be that different from Jenkins World 2017. There will be one ticket, one event venue, one set of keynotes, and one exhibit space. There will be session tracks who are marked as Jenkins, DevOps, etc. And of course there will be marked community space. A few weeks back, Alyssa, Mark, Liam, Tyler, myself and a few others spent some time brainstorming what other interesting things we can do this year.

I think Jenkins World remains one of those cases where the interest of the community and the interest of the event producer (CloudBees and other sponsors) are well aligned. The developer community benefits from having a get together and a place where we can interact with users. The user community benefits from the learning. And CloudBees and other sponsors benefit from being in front of those people. I think this name change will help us draw an even bigger crowd and in their eyes signify the key role Jenkins plays in this space, which I think will only make this event even more valuable.

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

[Kohsuke Kawaguchi]

I will be travelling on April 11th, so I asked Tyler to drive this part of the meeting. My regrets for missing the meeting.

As a board member, given that Jenkins World is an approved name, from the technical perspective of approving this trademark request, here is my absentee +1 vote. 

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Kohsuke Kawaguchi

[Daniel Beck]

> On 30. Mar 2018, at 18:53, Kohsuke Kawaguchi <kkawa...@cloudbees.com> wrote:
>
> On behalf of CloudBees, I’d like to request the permission to use the following name that uses ‘Jenkins’ in it:
>
> • DevOps World - Jenkins World
>
> This is the new name of the event that we've been calling "Jenkins World", which is a previously approved mark, and needless to say, many of you have been there in the past several years. I think all the basic considerations led to the approval of Jenkins World still applies. I’ve put this up as an agenda for April 11th project meeting to be able to get a decision there. If you have any concerns or objections, please chime in on this thread prior to the meeting, so that we can address them.

I won't be around for the meeting, but I'm +1. Since Jenkins World is approved, and "DevOps" is in a similar space, this seems straightforward to me.

[Oleg Nenashev]

+1 as well