As a current ownCloud user, I’m looking forward to how Nextcloud develops.
One thing that I think would be a good idea is if the company name was different to the product/project name. So the product/project could be called Nextcloud (and a Nextcloud Foundation and nextcloud.org could exist), but the company name should be something completely different. Like Ubuntu and Canonical.
I know that the Nextcloud trademark will belong to the Foundation, but having a company with the same name is just confusing. If the company ever goes “bad”, the Nextcloud Foundation might want to distance themselves from the company. Not that I’m suggesting that will happen, but if the company is called something different to start with, that makes things clearer.
There is also the confusion that can be caused when someone says “Nextcloud want to do this, that or the other”, and one is not sure whether one is referring to the “Inc” (or the GmbH in this case) or the project or Foundation. Again, a separate company name would help there.
I think that Nextcloud GmbH will work together and inside of the community. Thats exactly the difference to ownCloud.org and ownCloud Inc. …no need for another Trademark I think
Yes, Mar1u5 is correct. We have to figure out how exactly to do this but the goal is: the community (through the foundation) owns the trademark. Not the company.
Now you have a point about the name of the GmbH, so - I’ll take this to the ppl doing the legal stuff.
Some quick feedback already: this was something we really had not thought off and yes, it’s a problem. We have to find a solution. And we will. Many thanks for bringing it up!
One option would be to have a foundation that’s not limited to solely Nextcloud – by either:
setting up one with a (perhaps just slightly) wider goal in mind than serving just one product/project; or
joining an existing foundation – there’s several now and more are coming this year, so it should be possible to choose one that fits Nextcloud best.
To be clear, it was the name of the GmbH that I had concerns about. I have no problem with the Foundation being called Nextcloud, as the Foundation will hold the Nextcloud trademark.
So we’ve discussed it a bit and we think that creating a split between company and product name does create confusion (eg Canonical/Ubuntu) so we’d rather keep them together. The Foundation thus needs to have the rights to revoke the trademark but only under clear rules so as to not threaten the company’s business for anything other than pure EVIL from the company
That is the direction we want to take this. We’re gathering more internal ideas on the foundation atm and will then come with a concrete proposal we can then more widely discuss - this will be a part of it.
