If the software were to change its name, I'd prefer it if the name Zope would *not* be devalued. I want Zope Corporation to be successful, and I recognize that much of their past marketing success has been derived from conflating the software with the company name. But I don't think this is necessary for Zope Corporation to be successful any longer. They've gotten a lot of value from the conflation so far, and I think that they would still be considered the "top tier" vendor for a solution based on the software even if it were to be called something different.
Given ZC's enormous initial single-source contributions (ZODB, ZPT, DTML, acquisition, extensionclass, money spent at tradeshows, blood sweat and tears poured into bugfixes and feature additions, and so forth), I think that historically conflating the brand and the software has been totally reasonable and absolutely fair. But there are a number of problems lately.
The first problem is that for the past two or so years with the exception of the maintenance of libraries shared across Zope versions (ZODB and zdctl), and features aimed at making it easier to merge Zope 3 and Zope 2 together (new-style extension classes and their fallout, which personally I think is interesting but have no burning desire to use for customer work), most actual feature implementations and bugfixes for Zope 2 have been done by community members who have no legal affiliation with Zope Corporation and could not legally use the word Zope in a business or product name. Likewise, much/most of the Zope 3 development work has been done by outsiders. It would be nice for those folks to be able to get some useful brand value out of those contributions. I think more developers would actually use Zope if they felt like it was "omnipresent", like Apache or Linux, and that can only come from having a more vibrant community. I believe having a vibrant community built around a brand depends on the neutrality of the brand (or at least the perception of neutrality).
The second problem is that ZC is fairly aggressive in defending the Zope trademark. For example, this website used to answer at a domain name with the term "zope" in it. As a result, I was asked to license the marks, and the license agreement stipulated that ZC could revoke the license if they didn't agree with the site's content. I declined and changed the site name instead of signing the agreement. Now, you can feel free to call me paranoid. At least they offered me a license, right? The license was fairly reasonable other than the content-review bit. But FWIW, I would have felt much better about signing such an agreement if the license holder was not a for-profit company with interests that have already proven to be at least marginally odds with my own. I think that the result of ZC aggressively defending the trademark actually *stifles* the value of the brand. I'd love to see a thousand Zope-related websites with "Zope" in their names and see businesses named "ZopeFoo" and so forth; a more "rising tide floats all boats" sort of attitude. Compare this with the current trademark situation for Apache or Linux. There are plenty of websites that use the trademark... "linuxcare" and "apache-server.com" and so forth.. maybe they've all signed agreements, but if so, I think they probably felt comfortable doing so as the current mark-holders are either nonprofits or individuals who have demonstrated that they have no interest in monetizing the brand.
Any of the following would be preferable to me over the current situation:
a) ZC didn't hold the marks which represent the software and the marks were held by a more neutral organization.
b) a new set of marks to represent the software was created and held by a more neutral organization.
c) ZC didn't so aggressively defend the marks
I'll add, somewhat preemptively, I'm not out to hurt anyone here. I want the community and business opportunities related to Zope to grow, beause frankly I think that's the only way "Zope" (the software and the community) will survive. This is actually also in ZC's interest, because if the community doesn't grow, it won't either.
It would help to have a discussion with the ZC folks about this. In the past, they've not been very receptive to any of these ideas, but maybe things can change.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear
Posted bywebmavenat
2005-06-29 01:09 PM
I said 'devalued', not 'deprecated'. The value in the 'Zope' brand name lies mostly in the fact that it is a popular open source project. If you change the name of the community and the software, you face 2-3 years of getting back the critical mass of name recognition (longer for some forms of brand-building, like book titles) while at the same time the meaning of the original name slowly shifts to 'proprietary version of (fill-in-the-blank)', or something similar. You can be charitable and add in the words 'value added' into that phrase, if you like. This gradually sucks all the real value (as in value proposition) out of the name, other than basic name recognition. There isn't much you can do to change how that would work out, it's a natural consequence of the name change.
Like it or not, Digital Creations was *not* able to build it's own brand without piggybacking on the Zope name, and if the project were now to change it's name then Zope Corporation would face a slow slide back to obscurity. Not *all* the way back, mind you (all those old articles still on the web), but definitely less than they have today.
This would be a royal pain over the 2-3 year period for independent consultants, whose value proposition is in being 'Zope experts', but a medium-term (1-year) boost for other value added vendors and projects, including Plone, Enfold, Nuxeo, Infrae, etc.
Please don't misunderstand me, this is worthy of consideration as a long-term solution if no other agreement can be reached. But the potential costs must be understood by everyone concerned, and it would be far better for everyone if Zope Corporation were instead to transfer the trademark to the foundation and receive a perpetual/irrevocable/etc. license back.
BTW, ZC really doesn't have much of a choice in defending the trademark in some respects. They can't let it become a generic name without losing all protection.
Then again, prohibiting 'inappropriate associations' for the name doesn't really qualify in that regard, instead, that is protecting the trademark *value*, which is a different thing entirely.
Given ZC's enormous initial single-source contributions (ZODB, ZPT, DTML, acquisition, extensionclass, money spent at tradeshows, blood sweat and tears poured into bugfixes and feature additions, and so forth), I think that historically conflating the brand and the software has been totally reasonable and absolutely fair. But there are a number of problems lately.
The first problem is that for the past two or so years with the exception of the maintenance of libraries shared across Zope versions (ZODB and zdctl), and features aimed at making it easier to merge Zope 3 and Zope 2 together (new-style extension classes and their fallout, which personally I think is interesting but have no burning desire to use for customer work), most actual feature implementations and bugfixes for Zope 2 have been done by community members who have no legal affiliation with Zope Corporation and could not legally use the word Zope in a business or product name. Likewise, much/most of the Zope 3 development work has been done by outsiders. It would be nice for those folks to be able to get some useful brand value out of those contributions. I think more developers would actually use Zope if they felt like it was "omnipresent", like Apache or Linux, and that can only come from having a more vibrant community. I believe having a vibrant community built around a brand depends on the neutrality of the brand (or at least the perception of neutrality).
The second problem is that ZC is fairly aggressive in defending the Zope trademark. For example, this website used to answer at a domain name with the term "zope" in it. As a result, I was asked to license the marks, and the license agreement stipulated that ZC could revoke the license if they didn't agree with the site's content. I declined and changed the site name instead of signing the agreement. Now, you can feel free to call me paranoid. At least they offered me a license, right? The license was fairly reasonable other than the content-review bit. But FWIW, I would have felt much better about signing such an agreement if the license holder was not a for-profit company with interests that have already proven to be at least marginally odds with my own. I think that the result of ZC aggressively defending the trademark actually *stifles* the value of the brand. I'd love to see a thousand Zope-related websites with "Zope" in their names and see businesses named "ZopeFoo" and so forth; a more "rising tide floats all boats" sort of attitude. Compare this with the current trademark situation for Apache or Linux. There are plenty of websites that use the trademark... "linuxcare" and "apache-server.com" and so forth.. maybe they've all signed agreements, but if so, I think they probably felt comfortable doing so as the current mark-holders are either nonprofits or individuals who have demonstrated that they have no interest in monetizing the brand.
Any of the following would be preferable to me over the current situation:
a) ZC didn't hold the marks which represent the software and the marks were held by a more neutral organization.
b) a new set of marks to represent the software was created and held by a more neutral organization.
c) ZC didn't so aggressively defend the marks
I'll add, somewhat preemptively, I'm not out to hurt anyone here. I want the community and business opportunities related to Zope to grow, beause frankly I think that's the only way "Zope" (the software and the community) will survive. This is actually also in ZC's interest, because if the community doesn't grow, it won't either.
It would help to have a discussion with the ZC folks about this. In the past, they've not been very receptive to any of these ideas, but maybe things can change.
Like it or not, Digital Creations was *not* able to build it's own brand without piggybacking on the Zope name, and if the project were now to change it's name then Zope Corporation would face a slow slide back to obscurity. Not *all* the way back, mind you (all those old articles still on the web), but definitely less than they have today.
This would be a royal pain over the 2-3 year period for independent consultants, whose value proposition is in being 'Zope experts', but a medium-term (1-year) boost for other value added vendors and projects, including Plone, Enfold, Nuxeo, Infrae, etc.
Please don't misunderstand me, this is worthy of consideration as a long-term solution if no other agreement can be reached. But the potential costs must be understood by everyone concerned, and it would be far better for everyone if Zope Corporation were instead to transfer the trademark to the foundation and receive a perpetual/irrevocable/etc. license back.
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Then again, prohibiting 'inappropriate associations' for the name doesn't really qualify in that regard, instead, that is protecting the trademark *value*, which is a different thing entirely.
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