Google founds Open Usage Commons to manage trademarks for open source projects

guest · Jul 8, 2020

Google founds Open Usage Commons to manage trademarks for open source projects
July 8, 2020
https://9to5google.com/2020/07/08/google-open-usage-commons-trademarks-open-source-projects/

Google has announced the creation of Open Usage Commons, an organization aimed to help open source projects manage and enforce their trademarks appropriately and effectively.

Their latest effort, Open Usage Commons, seeks to help establish clearer guidelines and enforcement procedures for the trademarks associated with open source projects.
Overall, Google’s intention is for Open Usage Commons to make it easier for companies and teams to safely use the trademarks of open source projects in a way that helps make it easy to know when two projects are related.
Click to expand...

For example, many organizations and fan groups use a variation of the “Angular” name and/or logo to show that they’re related to the larger Angular project. Open Usage Commons could, perhaps, decide to create guidelines for how to tailor the Angular logo to other needs, ensuring consistency among those who use that trademark.

That said, things are still very early and unknown for Open Usage Commons.
Click to expand...

Introducing the Open Usage Commons

We created the Open Usage Commons because free and fair open source trademark use is critical to the long-term sustainability of open source. However, understanding and managing trademarks takes more legal know-how than most project maintainers can do themselves.
The projects in the Open Usage Commons will receive support specific to trademark protection and management, usage guidelines, and conformance testing.
Click to expand...

guest · Jul 10, 2020

IBM weighs in on Istio joining Google’s Open Usage Commons
Google unsettles IBM by giving the Istio project's trademark management to new Google Open Usage Commons body
July 9, 2020
https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/ibm-weighs-in-on-istio-joining-googles-open-usage-commons/

Google yesterday announced the creation of the Open Usage Commons (OUC), a new open source organization focused on trademarks. As part of the launch, Google reveled the open-source service mesh project Istio would be joining the organization.

As a result, long-timer partner and founding member of the Istio project IBM has expressed disappointment in the project joining the Open Usage Commons.
According to a blog post by IBM fellow, VP and CTO Jason McGee, the organization “doesn’t live up to the community’s expectation for open governance.”
Click to expand...

IBM: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons

In May 2017, IBM and Google jointly announced the launch of Istio, a merger of Google’s Istio and IBM’s Amalgam8 projects. As a founding member of the Istio project, IBM is strongly invested in the engineering, leadership, and success of the Istio project.

Today’s announcement by Google of the creation of the Open Usage Commons (OUC) is disappointing because it doesn’t live up to the community’s expectation for open governance. An open governance process is the underpinning of many successful projects. Without this vendor-neutral approach to project governance, there will be friction within the community of Kubernetes-related projects.
At the project’s inception, there was an agreement that the project would be contributed to the CNCF when it was mature.
Click to expand...

Google should reconsider their original commitment and bring Istio to the CNCF.
Click to expand...

guest · Jul 19, 2020

Open source groups spar over Google trademark initiative
July 17, 2020
https://diginomica.com/open-source-groups-spar-over-google-trademark-initiative

It was no surprise, then, that Google's announcement of a new open source initiative called the Open Usage Commons caused some consternation among other open source proponents.

What the company has done has highlighted how companies had previously missed out on a crucial area of intellectual property and the company has shown that this could be a vital new area to explore.
The underlying reason was that the management of trademarks was an area for legal specialists - something beyond the competence of open source project maintainers. According to Google, the new initiative would address this knowledge gap.
Click to expand...

An imbalance of control
To reinforce his point about the importance of maintaining trademarks, DiBona considered the example of Istio. "Today, Istio users may freely use the Istio trademark to accurately refer to the project without prior written permission or a formal licence." There is one condition, however. DiBona adds:

Users may not use the mark in a way that confuses consumers about the origin of Istio or their own applications. This is in line with the history of trademarks in open source, where the permissive spirit of open source implies that you can use the mark this way.
That in a nutshell is the heart of the problem and it's the grey area that the Open Usage Commons wants to address.
Click to expand...

My take
Many of the positions in the open source world (and the cloud one too) are determined by commercial interests, so it's hard to disentangle technical viewpoints from political ones but Google's move has certainly shaken things up and has brought the issue of trademarks to the fore, something that the open source world has been slow to think about.
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Google founds Open Usage Commons to manage trademarks for open source projects

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

Log in or Sign up

Google founds Open Usage Commons to manage trademarks for open source projects

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

Useful Searches