Trademark Guidance. Russian Fedora initiative.

[Matt Domsch]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 11:22:26AM -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 06:23:06AM +0200, Alexey.Vasyukov at vdel.com wrote:
> > 2. The name of the website (russianfedora.ru)
> > 
> > We know current policy regarding community domains. And, we guess, our case
> > falls into the category https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Local_community_domains#
> > Self-purchased_domain
> > 
> > Just to make it clear - we have nothing against using "ru.fedoracommunity.org"
> > domain but we really can not switch to it just now. The problem is the
> > initiative was already presented by Red Hat to Russian Ministry of
> > Telecommunications as "Russian Fedora" (see above). So, we can not just drop
> > current website domain name - it has pretty strong visibility.
> > 
> > We would offer to use "ru.fedoracommunity.org" now as synonym for
> > "russianfedora.ru" and we will try to promote "ru.fedoracommunity.org" as the
> > main domain name in the future.
> > 
> > As we understand, in this case we need a license agreement for the domain name
> > "russianfedora.ru". What is required from our side as next step?
> 
> We can easily point the "ru.fedoracommunity.org" domain at the
> existing site, but the Board should also consider this a request for a
> trademark license for that site.
> 
> Is there any content at russianfedora.ru now?  I can't seem to view
> any web page at the site, either with "www." or without.  I bring this
> up for two points:
> 
> 1. The Board will want to know what will be present at this site
> before granting a license.
> 
> 2. If that site content doesn't exist already, then are you just as
> well off using ru.fedoracommunity.org?  Where and how is the
> "russianfedora.ru" site currently being actively promoted?

There is a site now at russianfedora.ru.  I can't read Russian, but it
looks like a blog aggregator and forums right now.

With regard to ru.fedoracommunity.org vs russianfedora.ru.  If the
longer-term goal is to use ru.fedoracommunity.org as the primary name,
but you have already given the russianfedora.ru name to various
interested parties, can I suggest using HTTP rewrites?

You would set up your site as ru.fedoracommunity.org, with a virtual
host russianfedora.ru which simply does HTTP rewrites to change such
URLs into ru.fedoracommunity.org URLs.  In this manner, the transition
from "old name" to "new name" can be seamless, and at some point down
the line (a year or two), you can stop purchasing russianfedora.ru.

Thanks,
Matt