maria-discuss team mailing list archive

[Michael Widenius <monty@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

>>>>> "Federico" == Federico Razzoli <federico_raz@xxxxxxxx> writes:

Federico> I found contradictory information about whom the MariaDB trademark belongs to:
Federico> "The MariaDB Foundation also holds the trademark of the MariaDB server and owns mariadb.org. This ensures that the official MariaDB development tree will always be open for the MariaDB developer community."

Federico> https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-foundation/

Federico> "SkySQL and MariaDB are trademarks or registered trademarks of SkySQL 
Federico> Corporation Ab in the European Union and United States of America and/or other countries."

Federico> http://www.skysql.com/about/legal/trademarks

Federico> If the last statement is true, I have several questions about the other statement I quoted and some other statements in the Foundation's site. If the last statement is false, I suggest it is fixed, because it is confusing.

The simple answer is as follows:

SkySQL is the owner of the trademark 'MariaDB', which they got by
buying Monty Program Ab.  The rules for the MariaDB trademark can be
found at:
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-trademark-policy/

However, before the buy out, I had promised some part of the trademark to
the MariaDB foundation and SkySQL must of course honor that promise.
We are still a bit late in the paperwork on this as there is still
some discussions of how exactly transfer the parts to the foundation
and also if we should include some additional parts to the foundation.


The 'specfic' tradmarks that the MariaDB foundation has exclusive use
to are:

- MariaDB Foundation
- mariadb.org
  - The foundation has full control of all the information on mariadb.org
MariaDB server
  - This means in practice that the foundation is the one that
    decides where the official version of the MariaDB code is.
    This guarantees that the MariaDB source will always be free and
    anyone can be part of developing MariaDB.

This was done to ensure that MariaDB is guaranteed to be always free
there will never be a reason to fork MariaDB because the community
can't be part of developing it!

That is in part of why the MariaDB foundation is so essential to the
MariaDB project and why we need more members to ensure that the
foundation can employ more developers to help drive the MariaDB
project forward with increased community participation..

Regards,
Monty
CTO of the MariaDB foundation