| ted | === START MEETING === Agenda: SFC General Counsel on Trademarks (pono) SFC Items (ted) Student programs (Outreachy, GSoC, etc) ( @Tav ) Developer meeting update (Mc) Vectors update ( ) Infrastructure update ( @doctormo ) Security Key Program (Mc) AI Import Project ( @joneuhauser ) Bugfix Program ( @joneuhauser ) Election (pono) Current Votes Status Next Meeting: May 5, 2023 First up, we've got Rick who is the new general counsel for SFC. He wanted to stop by so we could meet him as well as clarify some confusion that was happening over email on Trademarks. | 16:59 |
|---|---|---|
| rick.sanders | rick.sanders | 16:59 |
| rick.sanders | Hi everyone from Nashville, Tenn. | 17:01 |
| Tav | Hi! | 17:01 |
| Mc | hi! | 17:01 |
| doctormo | Hi Rick | 17:01 |
| pono | I hoped Rick could join and just give a little context for how SFC treats trademark issues and how we've been thinking internally about it. | 17:02 |
| rick.sanders | I hope folks can bear with me. I haven't been on IRC since I don't know when | 17:02 |
| Mc | you can join through the IRC side if you want :p | 17:03 |
| ted | It literally hasn't changed much 🤣 | 17:03 |
| Mc | but currently you're through rocket chat afaict | 17:03 |
| rick.sanders | I'm not sure how much everyone knows about what's prompted my involvement, but it starts with a question about the use of INKSCAPE trademarks on a book by Chris Rogers "Design Made Easy with Inscape" | 17:05 |
| doctormo | I was hoping we'd do a sort of educational spot on video too, but it depends on if there's enough to teach. | 17:05 |
| rick.sanders | Do folks want me to explain the situation and give you my take? | 17:07 |
| Tav | Yes! | 17:07 |
| ted | That sounds good. but I think also some generic rules of when we should involve you or not. We'd like things to be as frictionless as possible (we want people to write Inkscape books) but also want to protect our trademark. | 17:07 |
| rick.sanders | Yes, and I want that, too. First, though, don't be hesitant to involve me. I'm here to help. I'm also an experienced trademark attorney, so I actually enjoy this area of the law. | 17:09 |
| pono | Now that Rick is on the trademark@sfconservancy.org email alias, it'll be easier to just send mail there instead of going through me. | 17:10 |
| rick.sanders | So the way to think of a trademark is like a plant in your garden. It grows on its own, but it requires care, feeding, weeding, etc. | 17:11 |
| Mc | :) | 17:11 |
| doctormo | You know what us programmers are like for automating where possible. | 17:11 |
| Mc | Is there any followup to do with wacom's "Inkspace" btw ? | 17:12 |
| rick.sanders | My job is to make sure the trademark/plant grows a strong as possible in the environment. Mostly this means making sure that the trademark owner, which is SFC thru the PLC, shows that it is exercising quality control. | 17:13 |
| Moini | (or with that Spanish ad-ridden browser extension?) | 17:13 |
| pono | (I did request Google take down some of the Chrome extensions, but haven't heard back from them :/) | 17:14 |
| rick.sanders | What that "quality" is is up to us, but we need to at least show that we know how the marks are being used and that we're OK with the use. | 17:14 |
| Moini | (Thanks, Pono! ) | 17:14 |
| rick.sanders | So what we should avoid doing is giving blanket permission. At the same time, we don't need to conduct rigorous inspections (the way a hotel chain might). We just need to document that we know how the mark is being used and we're OK with it. | 17:16 |
| ted | So do we need a process for that? Like keep a list somewhere? I'm thinking a spreadsheet in nextcloud. But not sure how it should be done. | 17:17 |
| Moini | Does https://inkscape.org/about/branding/ no longer apply? | 17:17 |
| doctormo | That would be a change to our policy I think, at least in intent. | 17:17 |
| rick.sanders | The other important thing is: when a mark is used, what matters isn't our intent but how the use is perceived by the public. That's because marks are really about the relationship between the product and the consuming public. | 17:17 |
| ted | Well, it isn't saying people need to ask, it is saying that we should track when we know about it. | 17:18 |
| rick.sanders | Yes, I think medium-term we need to re-visit the branding policy. I see what it's getting at, but it needs some changes. | 17:18 |
| rick.sanders | And that's well within my capabilities to do. | 17:18 |
| doctormo | I like to think the policy is also useful internally, and maybe an expansion can include instructions and details for what we would do internally. Like tracking. | 17:19 |
| ted | Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps a "legal document" for the lawyers at a publisher for instance. But also a policy on how we deal with requests. (they're both kinda policies, but trying to distinguish a bit there) | 17:19 |
| Moini | But we're not going to have to ask every creator of every talk, tutorial, extension, user group, etc. to ask for a review (hopefully)? | 17:22 |
| rick.sanders | Ideally, the documentation would include something that shows we understand what product the marks are being used on, and we think the product meets our standards (which can be pretty squishy, but can't be non-existent). | 17:22 |
| ted | Could we blanket approve non-commercial usage to ensure that is less difficult? | 17:23 |
| doctormo | This is where I'd love to get more education. The difference between a mark being used in reference to some other product, and a mark being used on the product itself. | 17:23 |
| rick.sanders | TO address Moini's point: No, fortunately. The vast majority of uses of our marks aren't what we would call "trademark uses." They're just uses necessary to identify the project/product. You simply can't talk about "Inkscape" without saying INKSCAPE. So you don't need permission to use a product by name. (That's what I think the branding policy is getting at, BTW.) | 17:24 |
| Moini | Noted, thanks! | 17:24 |
| ted | @rick.sanders, is there some generic "Dummy's Guide to Trademarks" resource that you'd recommend for us? I think there's probably a lot we could get out of something more generic. | 17:26 |
| rick.sanders | To doctormo's point: A trademark is used in a way that needs permission if the consuming public would think the product (a good or a service) originated with "us," or has been endorsed or sponsored by "us." (I put "us" in quotations because the consuming public doesn't have to know precisely who the source or approver is—just that somebody stands behind the quality inherent in the mark.) | 17:27 |
| rick.sanders | ted let me think. Unfortunately, trademark lawyers themselves will sometimes exaggerate certain aspects to make more work for themselves... So the question is who do I trust to describe the law honestly... | 17:29 |
| ted | Heh, yeah. I figured asking ChatGPT was a bad choice here :-) The resources on the Internet can vary wildly. | 17:30 |
| rick.sanders | It's unfortunate that trademark are sometimes called "intellectual property" because they behave nothing like copyright or patents. | 17:30 |
| doctormo | I'm just going to watch old QuestionAuthority twitches ;-) | 17:30 |
| pono | Also there is the issue of trademarks for open source projects being a bit of a different beast. So hopefully we can find something that is directly relevant for us :) | 17:31 |
| rick.sanders | pono: yes, I know we want to be as free and loose as possible. The hitch is the need to exercise *some* quality control. How do we do that in the most efficient way, when every situation might be just different enough | 17:32 |
| rick.sanders | Trademarks are weird: they last forever, in theory, so long as they're being cared for. But they can also just up and die—or at least grow weaker. | 17:33 |
| ted | So @rick.sanders, what do you think are good next steps for us? Do you want to propose some changes and we can discuss them? Do we need a separate meeting to discuss this? Or is it something the SFC is going to draft for all projects? | 17:33 |
| rick.sanders | ted that seems like the best plan. I'd like to amend the branding policy, so it can catch as many issues as possible while protecting the marks. But we'll need some process by which I can flag situations when we need to exercise QC and bring them to the PLC's attention (because the PLC is best positioned to know what's best for the marks) | 17:35 |
| pono | So maybe we can draw something up and either send it to the team lists or schedule a meeting in a couple weeks. | 17:37 |
| ted | Great, that sounds good. I'm sure we'll have more questions as the process goes through. And anything you can send to help us educate ourselves would be wonderful. | 17:37 |
| joneuhauser | Revising this relates nicely to some discussions we had at the hackfest. | 17:37 |
| ted | Also, you're welcome to chat in this channel anytime. Can't promise we'll be around, but probably someone will be. | 17:37 |
| rick.sanders | Again, trademarks are weird. Because I started as a copyright attorney, it took me years to really grok them | 17:38 |
| rick.sanders | Every trademark situation has three players: the markholder, the mark user (or infringer), and the consuming public. It's kind of a three-body problem | 17:38 |
| ted | Heh, I think being a copyright attorney still puts you way ahead of us :-) | 17:38 |
| rick.sanders | ted but copyright law also misled me, so I was kind of worse off | 17:40 |
| Mc | (I have to go, will read the rest of the backlog later - my main question would be whether it's the same rules globally or just applicable to the us ?) | 17:41 |
| ted | Cool. I'm going to head down the agenda just so we can try to get some other things in, but thanks again Rick for introducing us to this, and we're excited to see what we can get done here. | 17:41 |
| joneuhauser | Also for this discussion a higher bandwidth meeting type might be useful. | 17:41 |
| ted | Oh, one more question :-) | 17:41 |
| rick.sanders | Mc: the rules ideally would be global, just for simplicity's sake. But trademark law has a lot of play in the joints, and every PLC might have different needs, so I might need to be flexible | 17:42 |
| Moini | (globally = internationally, was Mc's question) | 17:42 |
| ted | K, next up: SFC Items (ted) | 17:43 |
| Moini | (but that could also be fleshed out in another meeting!) | 17:43 |
| ted | SFC Financial summary: https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2525393 | 17:43 |
| rick.sanders | moini oh thanks for the clarification. | 17:43 |
| ted | Largely the same but with more expenses landing from the hackfest and contracted work. Also some stickers, mug expenses and the mac builder. The Paypal import is still at 1/31 so the income is roughly the same as last month. For an update on our allocations tracking: https://office.inkscape.org/nextcloud/index.php/s/P6YArrZGzFXJ4FR The big changes there are adding the GTK4 bootstrap program and the Mentor Stipends. That's knocked our allocated expenditures this year up to ~$150K | 17:43 |
| RdH | I have received the reimbursement for my Mac mini! | 17:44 |
| ted | Clearly some of those have margin in them so that won't be what we spend, but just where we are projected currently. I'll update the numbers as the various programs finish so we get more accurate numbers throughout the year. Lastly, in non-financial news, we got the FSA all updated and signed :-) | 17:44 |
| Moini | I just read that Debian has 800000 on their account, just for comparison. Gave me a bit of a surprise. | 17:44 |
| Moini | (them being so much bigger ...) | 17:45 |
| ted | Yeah, they've had a weird relationship with money. But also I'm surprised as they run a rather large conference with sponsors. | 17:45 |
| RdH | Still open are Pono's stay at the Hackfest and beverages. Apparently the request for beverages was rerouted internally in SFC although I was using the ticket number that Ted left in the GitLab issue. | 17:45 |
| Tav | I need to take off. Quick summary of GSoC. We had 12 applicants. We've made a first pass through the proposals. We could use one or two more mentors. | 17:46 |
| ted | Oh @RdH there was a charged item for beverages, did that get resolved? | 17:46 |
| RdH | No, I have not received that yet | 17:46 |
| ted | @Tav, thanks for the update! | 17:46 |
| RdH | But it's only been 3 weeks and the marked deadline is 30 days. | 17:46 |
| ted | @RdH, hmm, okay. Not sure if it was different then. Okay, grab me if it doesn't come in the next week and I'll try and chase it down. Next up I have: Developer meeting update (Mc) Mc, had to go, can someone else give an update there? | 17:46 |
| pono | @RdH Ah sorry about the delay, I'll check with Rosanne about the status. | 17:49 |
| Moini | @doctormo wrote a nice summary, https://lists.inkscape.org/hyperkitty/list/inkscape-devel@lists.inkscape.org/thread/Q2AAQHIVGLOIYU3U257OH4WQIZELUSZL/ | 17:50 |
| ted | That's for the link @Moini Thanks | 17:51 |
| Moini | And for March summaries , see https://lists.inkscape.org/hyperkitty/list/inkscape-devel@lists.inkscape.org/ | 17:51 |
| ted | whew, can't type. | 17:51 |
| Moini | Np, I guessed that was what you meant. | 17:51 |
| ted | Next up: Vectors update, @Moini can you give that? | 17:51 |
| Moini | Yep. We're currently in the last days of the 1.3 About Screen contest, contributor voting is going on with 27 voters up to now, which is a similar number to last time, I think. | 17:52 |
| Moini | If you haven't voted yet, please do at https://inkscape.org/gallery/=artwork/inkscape-13-about-screen-contributor-voting/ | 17:52 |
| Moini | And if you want to help enable others to vote, visit https://inkscape.org/*membership/ and confirm memberships of those people you know. | 17:53 |
| ted | Awesome, they're all really amazing. | 17:53 |
| Moini | Voting ends on Sunday night, winner will be announced on Tuesday. | 17:53 |
| ted | And so excited to see the membership stuff catching on. The About Screen was a great way to promote that. | 17:54 |
| Moini | Then we've had the alpha0 release, which was well received, and also a little April fool's joke. Yes, I thought that was a good opportunity to get that started, with something lower-stakes. | 17:55 |
| ted | I'm not sure if we're quite ready, but we're probably gonna want to promote the GTK4 bootstrapping call for applications soon. | 17:55 |
| joneuhauser | Yes, that will happen end of next week. | 17:56 |
| Moini | Please open a bug report, when it's time, with all the necessary info, and maybe even some small prewritten parts. | 17:56 |
| prkos | who are the audiences for GTK4 announcement? | 17:56 |
| doctormo | Very much liked seeing the about screen used to shake out the bugs in memberships | 17:56 |
| ted | @prkos, for the gtkmm developer we'd like to find someone in that community. So developers, but we need to reach out some. | 17:57 |
| Moini | Developers who want to be hired, @prkos . | 17:57 |
| joneuhauser | [ ](https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/leadership_committee?msg=R9rAqNessDHGbdbm4) Senior c++ developers with gtk experience | 17:57 |
| prkos | do we have experience with this, channels where to reach out and how to get best results? | 17:58 |
| ted | I'm a bit worried about finding someone with the expertise we need there, it is probably even more niche than Inkscape Developer ;-) | 17:58 |
| doctormo | I agree. It will be a really specific group and we may not get a lot of applicants. Or applicants that meet the spec. | 17:58 |
| pono | I can reach out to Igalia and other networks to see if anyone has expertise/ would give us a discounted rate | 17:59 |
| joneuhauser | We’ll message a lot of people individually, but also put the offer on fossjobs and put it on the website. Not sure we need it on all social platforms. Maybe mastodon | 17:59 |
| ted | @prkos, not explicitly with this tech. | 17:59 |
| doctormo | But we have good channels in the Gtk community, so we'll be able to get the announcements out there I think. Maybe put it on the gtk mailing list (is that bad?) | 17:59 |
| ted | @doctormo, I don't know the policy there. But that's a good idea if they allow it. | 17:59 |
| prkos | maybe they have [Jobs] filter for their posts on gtk mailinglist | 18:00 |
| prkos | many do | 18:00 |
| ted | So @joneuhauser can you make the bug for vectors when we have everything together? | 18:01 |
| joneuhauser | We’ll discuss it at the hiring team meeting, next Thursday. | 18:01 |
| joneuhauser | Will do. | 18:01 |
| joneuhauser | Not sure we need vectors urgently, it’ll mostly be some emails to specific places. | 18:02 |
| ted | Sounds good. I'm excited about getting GTK4 bootstrapped, it should make a huge difference for our Mac users. | 18:02 |
| Moini | That would be fine, but we could probably easily do a social media post. | 18:02 |
| ted | I think we'll need a public announcement to link to in those places. Something that looks more official than "this one guy said this one thing in an email" :-) | 18:02 |
| prkos | is UX included in the GTK4 upgrade? | 18:03 |
| prkos | IIRC some UI bugs and requests weren't solved because of GTK3 limitations | 18:03 |
| ted | @prkos, there'll be some changes as things aren't available, but largely it is just porting the current UX. But yes, it should free up community developers to work on things like that after it is done. | 18:03 |
| doctormo | A UX review would be good, but as said elsewhere, involves recruiting the ux people to run those reviews. | 18:05 |
| ted | Especially things like GL acceleration as well. | 18:05 |
| prkos | I thought maybe there was a tag on Issues for GTK4 only bugs? | 18:05 |
| ted | We're running a bit over, so I kinda want to push the agenda a bit. Sorry to cut some discussion short. Next up: Infrastructure update ( @doctormo ) | 18:06 |
| prkos | that would make it easier to review and plan, maybe some issues can be resolved with new GTK4 features or at least come close | 18:06 |
| ted | @prkos that would be cool, I'm not sure it's something we have today. | 18:07 |
| doctormo | An issue reported by Bradley at the SFC relating to our SEO, apparently searching for Inkscape pages in google shows languages other than English very frequently. Which is a problem since some of those pages are old and have some issues with our cms. I've upgraded our SEO to try and fix that specific language issue in search and we'll keep looking for upgrade paths for the cms. | 18:07 |
| ted | @prkos the proposal does set some goals of what should be working with a successful port, but it is mostly trying to just bootstrap the library changes. | 18:07 |
| doctormo | Some website upgrades were made for the about screen contests, and one fix for membership requests (adding a reason text box) | 18:08 |
| ted | Oh, wow. I wonder how Bradley found that. | 18:08 |
| doctormo | Looking for our trademark policy page | 18:08 |
| ted | Ah, interesting. I figured he was searching in random languages :-) Great, and is the membership stuff holding up? I haven't looked at the list recently. | 18:08 |
| doctormo | Yes, looks like it's doing well, 217 people, lots of translators which is a great sign I think. | 18:10 |
| doctormo | We're starting to get some people who I think are on the edge of contribution, but worth looking at. | 18:10 |
| pono | Great news :) | 18:10 |
| ted | That is really awesome. | 18:11 |
| Moini | @doctormo Maybe a membership requests review should be part of dev meeting routine? | 18:11 |
| doctormo | Moini has been great with getting people to join :heart: | 18:11 |
| doctormo | Wouldn't dev team only be able to review developers though? We could do it, but we'd be strained on moderators, outreach people or translators. | 18:12 |
| Moini | Yes, and that would be okay. | 18:12 |
| doctormo | Sure, great idea. | 18:12 |
| doctormo | Especially if they say they're doing dev. | 18:12 |
| ted | Okay, next up: AI Import Project ( @joneuhauser ) Bugfix Program ( @joneuhauser ) | 18:13 |
| joneuhauser | AI Import Project: Good progress, especially on the reverse engineering side. This format is really weird, lots of ways to express the same, tons of redundant information for backwards compatibility, which sometimes can be ignored, sometimes not... but I'm getting a feeling for it.\nNicco's progress has been a bit slower recently, mostly because he still hasn't received his compensation for february @pono | 18:14 |
| joneuhauser | Bugfix program: see https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/march-bug-accelerator-2023/ | 18:15 |
| pono | Gah! | 18:15 |
| pono | Let me get on that. | 18:15 |
| doctormo | Blog posts for both of these are available here: https://inkscape.org/*membership/blog/ | 18:15 |
| joneuhauser | I'm quite happy with the bugfix program. Having someone available to fix those bugs that noone wants to work on but we need to have fixed? That's incredibly useful in preparation for the release. | 18:16 |
| RdH | That program needs to become a regular thing! | 18:17 |
| joneuhauser | @pono you haven't received my email about this? | 18:17 |
| pono | (I see there was a mishap with the banking info for Nicco, looks like it's fixed and ready to get paid on our end so I'll flag that for our payers) | 18:17 |
| joneuhauser | Good to hear that's on the way to be resolved. | 18:17 |
| ted | Thanks for the update @joneuhauser, also, you mentioned the GTK4 hiring committee is meeting? | 18:17 |
| pono | @joneuhauser I did miss your email yesterday, but just found it, so I'll follow up with you and Nicco when I hear back | 18:18 |
| joneuhauser | @RdH I need to conduct some data analysis after the fact, but I agree so far. | 18:18 |
| joneuhauser | Ted: yes, next thursday. | 18:18 |
| ted | Great. Sounds good. Next up: Election (pono) I think we're still in the membership subscribe state? But I wanted to get that on the agenda if there was anything we need there. | 18:19 |
| pono | @doctormo and I are meeting monday to go over the election procedure and software | 18:19 |
| pono | And yeah, seems like growing the memberships is going well :) | 18:20 |
| Moini | (most of those accounts haven't been claimed by their owners, I think) | 18:20 |
| doctormo | The old accounts are all using the email addresses that we knew at the time. | 18:21 |
| ted | Oh, that'd be good to check in on. But yeah, I think there is definitely interest. I think we now have a policy where we can drop those over time, right? | 18:21 |
| doctormo | But if anyone turns up and needs to be reconnected, it should be easy enough. Even if they don't use the recover password form and their old email address. | 18:21 |
| Moini | Yeah, I thought there would be more who do that, but I think it was just one? | 18:22 |
| ted | I think there are some folks from the AUTHORS list that were really no longer interested in the project. | 18:22 |
| doctormo | I think that's the case. | 18:23 |
| ted | Next up: Current Votes Status I don't think there are any, woo hoo! | 18:23 |
| doctormo | :partying_face: | 18:24 |
| ted | I did throw out the teams thing during the meeting, I'd love feedback on that. Last but not least: Next Meeting: May 5, 2023 Thanks everyone, sorry to go over. === END MEETING === | 18:24 |
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