Shane is founder of Punderthings℠ LLC consultancy, helping organizations find better ways to engage with the critical open source projects that power modern technology and business. He blogs and tweets about open source governance and trademark issues, and has spoken at major technology conferences like ApacheCon, OSCON, All Things Open, Community Leadership Summit, and Ignite.
Shane Curcuru serves as VP Brand Management for the ASF, wrote the trademark and branding policies that cover all 200+ Apache® projects, and assists projects with defining and policing their trademarks, as well as negotiating agreements with various software vendors using Apache software brands. Shane is serving a seventh term as an elected Director of the ASF, providing governance oversight, community mentoring, and fiscal review for all Apache projects.
Otherwise, Shane is: a father and husband, a BMW driver and punny guy. Oh, and we have cats! Follow @ShaneCurcuru and read about open source communities and see my FOSS Foundation directory.
Authored Comments
I love this quote:
"I think that in general technology companies don't recognize how important their brand is, and it's even more important in open source where there is no patent or copyright exclusivity a company can leverage—all you've got is the brand."
This is critical to understand both for these technology companies - to keep a strong and desirable brand - as well as for customers - to understand exactly who is leading the brand: the technical community, or the investors for the company.
Separately, do you have any advice for the foundations and communities (i.e. not for-profit corporations) who own their own brands? While the public perception issues are the same, the governance and organizational issues are not: the ASF for example is purely run by volunteers in this area; we don't have any paid staff for brand or community management.
This is a good start, although the overview is at quite a high level. Within Apache, Eclipse and Linux areas, there are actually many different community types around the various products or distros. I.e. each foundation has it's core rules and licensing requirements, but how the communities for various Apache projects or Eclipse plugins actually work together in somewhat different ways, depending on who's participating.
Also:
- The "Copyright" box is misleading. Some projects require copyright assignment, many don't. What's really important is the licensing. For example, at Apache, original owners hold copyright, but grant licensing to the ASF and to all downstream users.
- It's also "The Apache Software Foundation", not just "Apache Foundation". 8-)