[om-council] Holy name
Kate Lebedeff
kate at lebedeff.co.uk
Sun Jan 24 04:56:46 EST 2016
Hi Colin
>
> Hi,
> The commercial and sponsorship side of a our distro is important but we are a free software distribution with members who have voting rights which need to be respected.
> A common practice in manufacturing is to re-badge/rename a manufactured product to suit the market it is being sold into. We can (within reason) allow our sponsor to call the distribution anything they like to suit their commercial purpose. We already have "branding" packages within our distro so this is a feasible option. I think I am correct in saying that our commercial sponsor already has a separate webpage which could also be "branded".
> Is there a problem with this approach?
Yes. This is not just about partnerships “somewhere there”, it is also about contributors and simply Linux world.
Another thing - “somewhere there” they also read and see the news and will know it is ours, in the end of the day. This is cheating route.
Mitsubishi “Pajero” for example was renamed they way you described, but everyone knew it is Mitsubishi. In our case it will be to cheat to hide origin.
> Why hasn't this alternative been examined? Trying to force a choice on people in this way without considering all the options is a little short sighted. As for the downside of re-badging, I can see only one and that is that those that are using our product in Brazil will not know it is ours and so it might be that we do not get user spin off from commercial use.
And getting new users and contributors from commercial use, to me looks like even more important argument than money
> Is there any reason why this solution should not be considered?
>
>
> However it may be that the council may vote to take the route suggested and if that is the case OM is my preference. As regards member voting I think we are asking the wrong question. The vote should be on whether we abbreviate the name or not. This is far less controversial and can be given a strong justification because of the need for commercial sponsorship. Our members should be consulted if it turns out that it is decided to adopt an abbreviated name. If our sponsor re-badges then we do not need to consult the membership.
>
> I am more in favour of finding a different way forward than renaming the distro but before going down this course we should really try to find an alternative solution
Any suggestions are welcome, but the issue is such, that I am not sure alternative to changing the brand name exists
I am not sure what are your arguments against renaming. On a dedicated meeting you said that your only objection is that we should consult members before changing to acronym - that was accepted.
If you have other objections, please comment on them, because I do not understand
> to the problem rather than trying to get everybody to agree to something over which there are a number of different points of view.
>
> If I had to choose I'd probably go for Scion give all the roots stuff..
>
> One thing is for certain we should not let someone who is not part of this distro dictate how we make our decisions if we need to do something then we should do it and once it is done that individual is then completely disarmed.
I would say then that he should be pre-banned, when we take active steps in the direction of name, whatever they should be.
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