Robert Rohde wrote:

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Michael Snow wrote:

...

This is the statement on trademarks mentioned earlier. It both states the approach we want the Wikimedia Foundation to take and directs the staff to carry it out. It basically sums up what our understanding has been for a long time, but hadn't really been formally stated anywhere. The board also voted unanimously to approve this. The statement follows:

The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to enabling our mission through a wide network of chapters, community members, and organizational partners who are all able to better achieve their goals by identifying themselves with the Wikimedia community. Because of these efforts, there is a large amount of value and goodwill associated with the name and marks. Trademark law in the United States and internationally requires that the holder of a mark take affirmative steps to protect the integrity of the mark. However, because of our commitment to openness and community empowerment, we wish to do this in a way that allows chapters and community members to be able to continue to identify themselves with Wikimedia marks without being unnecessarily restrictive.

Because of this, we ask the Wikimedia staff to take appropriate steps to register and protect the Wikimedia marks, develop a set of policies and practices, and develop a strategy to allow uses by the chapters and community for activities in line with the Wikimedia mission.

--Michael Snow

Thank you Board.

Ant

I'd also like to express my thanks. Not having any usage guidelines for most Wikimedia marks has been a pet peeve of mine for, oh, 3-4 years now.

-Robert Rohde

Hold on Robert.

Michael provided us with the "wish" of the board.

That does not mean that this is done. That does not warranty either that the implementation proposed by the staff actually follow the guidelines offered by the board. We are still a LONG way before actually seeing usage guidelines that would enable community and chapters to further our common mission. But at least, the board statement is a start.

Since community elections are next corner, I guess this topic will have to come back on the plate very soon.

Ant

PS: see also

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values

Freedom An essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by the entire human community. We believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse. At the creation level, we want to provide the editing community with freely-licensed tools for participation and collaboration. Our community should also have the freedom to fork thanks to freely available dumps. The community will in turn create a body of knowledge which can be distributed freely throughout the world, viewable or playable by free software tools.

Accessibility and quality All the legal freedom to modify or distribute educational content is useless if users cannot get access to it. We try our best to give online access to high quality Wikimedia project content 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, as well as provide access to regularly updated, user-friendly, and free dumps of Wikimedia project content. We try, through partnerships if necessary, to ensure the widest distribution, through DVD's, books, PDF's, or other non-internet based means. To ensure world-wide, unrestricted, dissemination of knowledge, we do not enter into exclusive partnerships, with regards to access to our content or use of our trademarks.

Independence As a non-profit, we mostly depend on gifts to operate (donations, grants, sponsorship, etc.). It is very important to us to ensure our organization stays free of influence in the way it operates. For this reason, we strictly follow a donation policy, reserve the right to refuse donations which could generate constraints, and try to multiply the diversity of revenue sources.

Commitment to openness and diversity Though US-based, the organization is international in its nature. Our board of trustees, staff members, and volunteers are involved without discrimination based on their religion, political beliefs, sexual preferences, nationalities, etc... Not only do we accept diversity, but we actually look forward to it.

Transparency We must communicate Wikimedia Foundation information in a transparent, thorough and timely manner, to our communities and more generally, to the public. Our community is our biggest asset We are a community-based organization. We must operate with a mix of staff members, and of volunteers, working together to achieve our mission. We support community-led collaborative projects, and must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission.