Trademark guidelines.

Did you know there’s a set of trademark guidelines for the Fedora brand and mark? They’re getting less restrictive as we work through some details with Red Hat Legal. We’re trying to help our community spread the Fedora message without burdening them too much with legal hoops, like you’d find in a traditional trademark situation. US law can make this sort of thing tricky but worthwhile when you consider the return on the time invested.

Of particular note, though, is the section on Internet domains. Right now, you need a written license agreement with Red Hat if you want to register a domain name with “fedora” in it for use by a connected community. This clause prevents someone from registering domains that divert people away from Fedora communities, whether the central Fedora Project site or a locale-specific community.

I’m working with Legal to figure out a way to obtain domains on behalf of our community. If Red Hat simply buys these domains and point them to wherever our local community groups like, we save them out-of-pocket costs, reduce or eliminate any unnecessary legal overhead, and let our community do what it does best — spreading upstream-friendly FOSS love globally.

More on this as it develops.

Fedora 11 has a name!

And it’s Leonidas. Thanks to everyone for participating in the naming process.

As Jesse roared after the announcement, “This… is… FEDORAAAAAAA!”

BarCamp @FUDCon F11

A little late with the blogging, but dinner went overtime.

BarCamp starts at 9:00am on Saturday, as listed on the wiki. We’ll have breakfast arriving sometime between 8:00 and 8:30. Breakfast consists of coffee, tea, juice, bagels, and pastry. We’ll start pitches at 9:00am, so please be on time.

Judging by previous BarCamps, we should have the schedule sorted by about 10:15, so talks will probably start at 10:30. After two hours of talks, lunch will be available. There are going to be bags available in an assortment of meats for carnivores, and some lovely vegetarian and vegan sandwich bags as well, with plenty for everyone who pre-registered, and a drink assortment. (Pre-registration has its privileges, it’s true… those who didn’t can check back by the table at about 1:00pm, when there may be some extras left.)

After another set of talks, 1:30pm-4:30pm, and a short break, we’ll gather in the main hall, E51-345, at 5:00pm. There will be BRIEF comments and thank you’s for some very special contributors, after which we’ll head to Flat Top Johnny’s for FUDPub (6:00-10:00pm).

See you in the morning!

Chatty Cathies.

The Board will be meeting on IRC today at 1900 UTC / 2pm US Eastern time. You can find out how to join the conference on the Fedora wiki. This will be the last meeting of the current Fedora Board, and after the last appointed seat is set up this week, the new Board will meet for the first time next week.

All the current Board members have done an outstanding job, and I’m looking forward to working with the new members over the next year. Fortunately I’ll be seeing a lot of them at FUDCon Boston 2009 this coming weekend, where we’ll all be working hard to make Fedora an even better place for free software contribution. Whether we’ll see you there or not, please come by the meeting today and feel free to ask questions.

Fedora 11 release name voting

As was just announced on the announcement mailing list*, the voting ballots for the Fedora 11 release name are now open. To vote, you just need to be a member of one non-CLA group in our Fedora Account System. Voting ends at 2359 UTC 2009-01-09, so get your vote in quickly! (There’s nothing wrong with campaigning for a name of your choice either, if you’re so inclined.)

The Fedora release name is sort of a fun Easter egg for the community. Ultimately, it’s simply a way that anyone who participates in Fedora can have a say in what we call the next release. For Fedora 10, that name was “Cambridge,” which incidentally was Red Hat engineering’s internal release name for the Red Hat Linux 10 product that never was. That release ultimately became Fedora Core 1, “Yarrow.”

All the names on the ballot were submitted by the community, run through a series of searches to identify probable trademark conflicts, and then approved by the Fedora Board and Red Hat’s legal department, which did a more thorough search for conflicts and risk identification. The entire submission process was recorded on the wiki, where you can find details on all the suggestions.

Each release name is linked to the previous release name, and that link must be different from the link that came before it. We try to keep the links non-obvious and (arguably) clever wherever possible. In the past, the links have become a little more generic, but given the fairly good slate of names that’s on the ballot this time, I hope that will be less of an issue going forward.

Thanks again to Nigel Jones for coordinating our election process and to everyone who submitted a name for consideration!

* Not on it? join here.

Wishing I were more of a foodie.

I thought it would be nice just to talk about some delightful things we consumed over the holidays. Most of them were made by my wife because I suck at kitchen management. I just stay out of her way, or if she needs help, she’s learned to give me exact orders and I just obey. I do get credit for taking care of the Thanksgiving Day turkey — my one skill is in cooking large quantities of dead animal flesh, so as long as I take care of that part, she’s happy doing the rest. And then I clean the dishes.

Eleya made a wonderful rack of lamb, roasted with peppercorns, for Christmas Eve dinner. For some reason our oven ran strangely and forced her to serve the lamb a bit at a time, moving in form the edges as they reached the perfect stage of rare to medium rare that good lamb demands. All ended well and people were happy to come back for seconds (or thirds). She also made some fantastic green beans sauteed with shallots and vermouth, and the best garlic mashed potatoes I think I’ve ever had. Ever. Did I mention I made the salad? Yeah baby, stand back.

We had a really tasty champagne for New Year’s Eve, a de Margerie Grand Cru Brut. I think I might slightly prefer the Montaudon Classe ‘M’ that we had last year, but the de Margerie was quite good. It was very crisp with some apple notes, and probably lots of other stuff a better wine or champagne taster would be able to pinpoint.

We’d also decided, since we were spending NYE at home, to enjoy grown-up food after the kids were in bed. We ate sparingly at dinner so we could enjoy a nice basket of treats that were sent by an out-of-town friend — gourmet crackers, cheese, salami, mustard, and some nice chocolates. I think next year I may go out and hand-select these sorts of treats and pair them with the champagne we choose to ring in 2010, because it was really lovely.

Today she made some crystallized ginger which I’m really looking forward to trying when it’s fully done. It’s currently drying, after which it will be coated lightly with confectioner’s sugar. If you haven’t tried crystallized ginger, it’s wonderful — sweet and tangy but with a nice touch of spicy hotness. Despite what you might expect from the spicy heat, ginger is also quite exceptional for curing an acid stomach or heartburn — no kidding! Try it next time you have a sour tummy; you can find it at most grocers.

I also watched too many episodes of Iron Chef with my daughter on our one “couch potato” day. Her favorite subjects are science and cooking (go figure). I saw some really amazing ways to prepare buffalo and venison, and thankfully none of them involved ice cream.