

Trademark is OK -- but ownership should be unbiased  - lawyer12

It's appropriate for Drupal to have a trademark policy to protect it from being used to describe products/companies that are not really Drupal.<p>The trouble is that Dries should not own and protect the trademark as an individual. He has a huge conflict of interest -- the first license he granted for a commercial use was to his own company, Acquia, to create DrupalGardens.com.<p>The trademark should be owned and enforced by a non-profit, such as the Drupal Association, which will have in its charter the legal requirement that it treat individuals and companies even handedly.  Whatever policy the non-profit established for commercial use would be public (Dries does not list his criteria for granting commercial licenses) and benefit the Drupal project as a whole, not an individual.<p>For six years, before Dries announced he owned the trademark, the name Drupal was freely used by many companies and individuals. This fostered great growth in the project.<p>If Dries has established a restrictive trademark and license policy from day one, we would not have an open source Drupal movement right now -- the perception that Drupal was not controlled or owned by anyone for their commercial benefit was vital to gaining the participation of tens of thousands of developers.<p>It is thanks to the work of these tens of thousands of people that the name "Drupal" has value, and a trademark is worth enforcing. That value should be the property of the community, not one person.<p>I would urge anyone planning on contesting the policy to seek legal representation from an organization such as Electronic Freedom Foundation -- getting your trademark application for a derivative of Drupal denied, and then not having a legal team to fight the decision, only establishes further precedent that the trademark has been properly claimed by Dries.
======
ScottWhigham
Why are you posting this here?

