Zope Trademark Solution
In the Foundation chat today, and particularly over time, the topic of the Zope marks being owned by Zope Corporation has been a point of contention.
Witness http://www.zopezen.org/Members/limi/zc-communitychat for a small taste of the argument (note that this took place over a year and a half ago).
But given that:
- the word "Zope" for business purposes and the circle-Z logo are the legal marks of Zope Corporation
- Zope Corporation feels that this brand has value that would preclude them from granting ownership of the trademark to a Foundation-like entity
- there has been contention about the marketing of "Zope" ever since Digital Creations changed its name to Zope Corporation
- there is the nascent possibility of creating a Foundation with the purpose of "marketing Zope".
... why don't we just think about "fixing" this in terms of changing the name of the software. The Foundation could be named after this new thing.
It would seem to make sense to me to start a new brand if it would truly help grow the community around the software. Before anyone grips their tinfoil hats too tight, this is explicitly, utterly, completely not advocation for the "f" word (I can't even bring myself to say it, god help us all), just a stab at a practical solution to a problem that seems to dissuade developers from contributing to "Zope". This of course makes sense only if it would help grow the market and the community and I suspect it would not be successful unless Zope Corporation embraced the name change.
"f" word?
Which one? rhymes with "torque" maybe?
1119547624
Advocation is a word (I even looked it up!) ;-)
Yes, the word I was thinking of rhymes with torque. Let us not speak of this again.
Yes, the word I was thinking of rhymes with torque. Let us not speak of this again.
change the trademark
It's a viable long-term solution, but the 'nuclear option' has the serious downside of losing 2-3 years of momentum as the new name builds up brand equity while simultaneously devaluing the original name over the same time period. in the short-term, this is lose-lose, even if various organizations step up to the plate with marketing $$ to promote the new identity.
not really the point...
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.
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.
an invitation for help that leads to a contusion. [wink]