Trademarks are Open-Source-Friendly

Keir Thomas calls trademarks a menace to open source, but I couldn’t disagree more. When used properly, trademarks, like copyright, are a handy tool to protect and promote open-source projects.

A little background. For the past few months, the openSUSE Project (or at least a few of its contributors) had been knee-deep in creating what we hope is a workable trademark policy to allow as much remixing and redistribution as possible by community contributors — while ensuring that there’s clarity around what is (and isn’t) an “official” openSUSE release or use of the openSUSE name…