[aur-general] Legal question - Arch Linux trademark on goodies - Transparency

[William Gathoye]

Hello everyone,

First of all, following a discussion on Twitter, I wanted to know
whether this company is authorized to sell goodies (hoodies) with the
Arch Linux trademark on it? I know it is being listed on the
archlinux.org frontpage, but I wonder what's percentage is given to the
project as compensation [1].

With FOSDEM behind the corner, there have been quite a few discussions
on social media and IRC recently regarding stands/community involvement
etc. A few questions have been raised wrt. trademark/acting on behalf of
the project, etc. and I wasn't able to find an answer on the Wiki. Who
can speak on behalf of the community, etc? Even if Arch Linux is a
meritocratic organization, do we have such a person inside our
community? Maybe it's the right time to fill the gap in the wiki?

To understand better the situation, let's imagine a few use cases.

1. Someone who wants to craft Arch Linux merchandising for him/herself
and others given free of charge.

    e.g. I attend FOSDEM and I want to show others I'm an Arch Linux
user. If another Arch Linux user passes by and ask me if I have goodies,
give them free of charge.

2. Someone wants to craft Arch Linux merchandising for others. No gain
other than the one to cover the fees of the company we are ordering from
e.g. Zazzle.

    e.g. An Arch Linux stand is organized at FOSDEM and I want to
organize it.

3. A magazine is asking the stand organizer to make an interview on
behalf of the community with a question like why do you have dropped
i686 compatibility? What is the project direction for the next few
years, etc.

4. Someone wants to give money to the project. Can he receive a document
for taxing purpose?

What is the legal process for these aforementioned use cases? According
to the trademark rules, we have to ask the the Arch Linux Project Lead
for "merchandising purposes".[2] Does asking money to the end user to
cover charge can be considered as a commercial activity even if we are
not making profits? Are we allowed to answer questions that could
involve the whole community?

When someone is donating money to the project, who is receiving it? How
can we have transparency about the IN/OUT of the treasury (server cost?
etc.). What is the legal structure behind Arch Linux? Are we a
foundation like The Document Foundation?

When a stand is organized for a particular event, does the Arch Linux
organization participate in the funding? I haven't been able to find
such an information on the Wiki. Because asking for the end user to pay
for his/her on goodies is not something that can have much success,
especially when the Fedora/Mageia/RedHat/Debian community is giving
everything for free in such an event.

For the record, even if I have been participating to FOSDEM since 2012
and have adopted Arch Linux as my daily OS since that date, I haven't
been able to see an Arch Linux stand yet. The only things I heard of:

  * a small lightning talk about pacman and the way packages are being built
  * some goodies informally given by the ex. Trusted User Andrea Scarpino.

Do we maintain a list of events whose topic was Arch Linux (other than
having to dig into the arch-event mailing list)?

Wrt. identity, do we have strict guidelines to follow (e.g. distances,
fonts to be used along side the logo, etc.) other than the short notice
from our Logo Usage Guidelines of our trademark policy page? [3]

I know these questions come as a burst, but I thank you already for the
answers you could give to me.

[1] https://www.hellotux.com/arch

[2]
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:TrademarkPolicy#Restricted_use_that_requires_a_trademark_license

[3]
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:TrademarkPolicy#Logo_Usage_Guidelines

-- 
William Gathoye
<william at gathoye.be>

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