Sometimes, that is the case, but not always.

Most churches, hospitals, universities and colleges have the legitimate-sounding label of “non-profit;” yet how many churches have you heard of which cheat their congregation? How many hospitals do you know of that are NOT revenue-driven?

How many colleges and universities use their “non-profit” funds to pay their football coach multi-million dollar contracts? Now the people – how many educators and employees would jump ship from one non-profit institution to another if there were a higher paying gig with better benefits at another uni?

Every entity, and most people working for them within, are actually “for-profit” folks. That’s how we survive in the world, by earning our keep.

After years working with and supporting both sides of the “not/for-profit” world, I no longer take the baiting pitch (hook-line-and-sinker) that “non-profits” are more purposeful or charitable. Nope. Buyer beware on that one.

What is most important is an organizations’ leadership and genuine character; not necessarily its business designation. When you can answer, “We are indeed lucky to have a leadership team such as this driving the effort,” now that is when you know your own personal investment of time, talent and treasure into the cause (whether for- or non-profit) are wise.

I assume that was a typo in there from Elin?

Just because you are not aware of instances of misuse or threats to the community does not mean they do not occur. We do not use publicity as a method of pursuing violators unless we absolutely have to (which has not happened so far). Just as with licensing, most people and firms are responsive to a simple email or if need be a formal letter explaining the rules. (And in fact most people are like Nicholas and WANT to do the right thing even without getting an email.) Only after such methods have failed would we file a legal action or even discuss specific violations in public.

As for “turning into mambo again” whatever that means, as stated already, unlike projects such as Mambo, the Joomla! trademark has never been owned by a for profit company and its legal status is totally different.

The OSM board unanimously approved our current trademark policy including that for domain name use back in the fall of 2007 following the unanimous endorsement of the proposed policy by the core team. I think we have been very successful at implementing it with a minimum of problems thus far. The Joomla! community is wonderful to work and that comes through especially on issues like this in which so many people have been so supportive and helpful.

The core team elects the board members. One can only get in the core team by invitation. This is not a democratic process. There is no way the community is allowed to be involved.

There are only 9 people left in the core team, whereas a while ago there where about twice as many. For most of the people that left the core team in the past 12 months there has been (almost) no official announcement. So obviously people start asking questions.

It’s about time the core team and the board create more transparency. Joomla is a great project (I wouldn’t bother posting this if I thought otherwise) but it’s at risk of turning into mambo again.

Thank you for clearing up a few issues, really great to read.

Here is a link to the OSM by-laws that you referred to.

http://www.opensourcematters.org/content/view/95/57/

Yes, you are right, OSM board members are elected by the Joomla! Core Team. It’s all explained on our by- laws which are on our website. Our policies and practices are indeed like those of any organization with a trademark although for philosophical reasons we are more generous in licensing domain name use than most other projects or companies are. We are indeed lucky that the Joomla! name is not owned by a non profit and not an individual or a for profit company.

@Mathias

Just as as software licensing in the form of the GPL actually allows software to be free by preventing it from become closed source, in the case of Joomla!, trademarking gives OSM the ability to allow the community to register domain names, use the logos and so on without fear that a for profit or an individual will be able to grab the Joomla! name or logo and shut all those community uses down. The Joomla! name is a valuable one because of the good will and reputation that go with it. Those were created through the hard work of thousands of people. Keeping a trademark requires that you control its use so we have done that in the simplest way we could come up with.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done for Joomla!, and I am sure you are too. I’m proud that my work–along with that of thousands of others– has helped to build Joomla!’s reputation for quality, ease of use, and an amazing community. The Joomla! community– not one individual or a for profit company –built the Joomla! brand, line of code by line line of code, web site by web site, and forum post by forum post, and OSM is going to make sure that the community’s work is protected.

I know that the OSM board members are elected, although I do not know by whom, my guess would be the core team of developers, but that is just a guess. I think that the core team is involved though, as Johan Janssens was up until recently on the OSM board.

I totally agree that this is an important topic worth discussing further.

Also, just on the domain name issue, I am not a legal expert, but I believe that if OSM decided to revoke permission to use the Joomla! trademark in a domain, they would need to sue the domain owner if they did not comply. From what I can see, this situation is no different from any other organisation protecting their mark.

I agree that it’s basic courtesy to ask before republishing emails. The thing that bugs me is this: if someday, for any reason at all, OSM revokes your permission, you will have to change your URL and website name, which obviously is never a healthy thing for any site.

Ask yourself: who is OSM? Who’s in there, how did they get in there? Is there a democratic process in place to replace the board of OSM? Where did they get the power to decide who gets to use the name? They certainly did not come up with it. Joomla should be owned by the community that built it, and it’s time the community starts asking these questions.

I was supposed to request permission to use the Joomla! name within the actual domain name, not to create a blog about Joomla!

Then I made a request to republish the emails from OSM. I would do this with any email correspondence, just as a basic courtesy. I did not suggest that the entire blog would be guaranteed to show Joomla! in a positive context.

OSM has no control over the content of this blog, apart from granting permission to use Joomla! in the domain, and to present the emails above in this post.

>This is incorrect, OSM holds trademarks for a small number of regions only, so definitely not worldwide.

You could be correct about this, I am not an expert in trademark rules.

This is incorrect, OSM holds trademarks for a small number of regions only, so definitely not worldwide.

>> After seeing that I would be re-producing the emails in a positive context, Elin graciously consented to have me re-produce the emails.

First you need permission to use the name Joomla (which can be revoked at any time), then you need to permission to blog about it — and only when it’s in a ‘positive context’? Doesn’t this smell extremely fishy to you? What will happen when you post something negative about OSM? Will you loose your permission? Your site is now effectively under control of OSM.