[TOS] Textbook, upstream, ownership of marks

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2010, Mel Chua wrote:

> Questions from someone who's still learning about the process of
> trademarks and such...
>
>> 1. Individual chapters are owned by their respective authors.
>
> What constitutes authorship?

Technically: Creation of any derivative work, no matter how small.  You 
could take Karsten's chapter, change two words, and call it "Mel's Docs 
Chapter, w00t!" so long as Karsten's work was appropriately cited.

My function is editor is ultimately to decide which chapters go in 
(through a consensus process, of course.)  Under no circumstances would I 
allow such a chapter to go in.  In fact, if there's not consensus among 
the authors about who wrote it, I wouldn't allow a chapter in.

> Who decides whether someone's contributions were sufficient enough to 
> warrant inclusion of an author?

The authors of the chapters themselves, I would say.  Again, we rely upon 
a consensus.  If consensus does not exist at the chapter level, it will 
not be included in the text.

> (And for that matter, can anyone just start a random chapter?)

Absolutely, and we should encourage this.

>> 2. The collective textbook -- most importantly, the title and its
>> trademark, and the right to decide what gets published under that mark --
>> are owned by an entity that can protect and sustain that brand.  I propose
>> that this will be Red Hat, since Red Hat paid for the time of the majority
>> of the authors to write the first version of the textbook.
>
> Under what terms will those rights be offered to others / how will they 
> request it?

The text is still CC-BY-SA-3.0.  I do not anticipate any restrictions upon 
redistribution of the text in any way; what I *do* anticipate is 
restrictions around use of the mark in conjunction with that 
redistribution.  i.e. "you cannot change the text and use our mark; you 
must instead call it something else."  This is what preserves our 
editorial voice.

--g

--
Educational materials should be high-quality, collaborative, and free.
Visit http://opensource.com/education and join the conversation.