Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Project Structure

[Dan Kuykendall]

David Kelly wrote:

> This sounds like it is gettting close.  But in order to truly have this 
> administered correctly the domain and the trademarks would need to be 
> assigned to FSF.  Otherwise, this situation could occur and you could just 
> refuse to live by what you have said.

I am not an unreasonable or dishonest person. I will live by agreements 
I make. I hve always done so with this project and with all things in my 
life.

> Co-assigning the domain name is not really going to work here as it 
> essentially means nothing ... because as soon as you wanted to pull back 
> control of the domain from the FSF (for whatever reason) you could - by just 
> taking them off the Administrative contract list and changing the passwords 
> etc.  So essentially you still control the domain.

Your wrong. If I were to decide later to "hijack" the domain back, I 
would lose a filed dispute. The admin contact is the one who "ownes" the 
domain. Also, I would not do this once I agree to it.

> > From a commercial perspective the major problem that we (as a company) have 
> with a single person controlling the 'brand' (the name itself, the domain and 
> the trademarks) is that if we contribute large amounts of business resources 
> (e.g. development time etc) to the project then essentially we are building a 
> 'brand' that is controlled by one person.  We are building someone elses 
> castle. 

> So by continuing to hold on to the domains, trademarks etc you restrict the 
> progress of the project, as it is very hard for people like me to secure 
> support from our Board of Directors to invest time and resources into 
> phpgroupware.  I am sure there are many other companies out there who are 
> faced with the same situation that ours is faced with.

This is all so false. phpGW has done well for over 3 years with me 
holding these two things. Linux trademark is owned by Linus Torvalds and 
there are lots of business investing in Linux development and such.

> I can sympathise with you wanting to recieve recognition for your work and I 
> think that is important to setup the structures to ensure that this happens 
> and continues to happen in the future - but at the same time I think that if 
> phpgroupware is going to achieve all that it could be then the 'brand' itself 
> needs to be controlled by a neutral third party like the FSF rather than a 
> single person.

I respect your opinion, but Im not going to give up the trademark. If 
that means a couple companies dont want to invest resources into the 
project, then that makes no effect on me.

> This would open the doors to commerical entities truly investing in the 
> project and as a result the project would be far more robust, secure and 
> feature rich than would be possible without this support.

Again, this is just a made up worry. Linux is a good example of that.

Dan