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Comment by gnufx | Hacker News Reader

This bit of [1], referred to in [2], seems relevant:

"their site owners, moderators, administrators, and users are required to comply with the Fedora Code of Conduct. Community sites and accounts which are unable to meet this standard of conduct will be required to cease use of the Fedora trademarks,"

I wasn't previously aware of it, but [3] may also be relevant. (I know no more than appeared on the devel list, other than history elsewhere.)

They may have cocked up the case, but a finding of bad faith against Red Hat seems unlikely to be fair, given the above.

1. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines?rd...

2. https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fe...

3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pocock

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> Respondent is making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain misleadingly to divert Internet users or to tarnish Complainant's FEDORA trademark.

It is bad faith because Respondent was not using the trademark to pretend to be Red Hat. Tarnishing a trademark would require misleading users to think that you are representing the company. If I create a website called microsoftsucks.com and detail reasons why I think Microsoft sucks, that is fair use. If I pretend to represent Microsoft on that site, then that is tarnishing Microsoft's trademark, or if I use the domain to sells shirts then that may not be considered fair use.

the domain name itself is in bad faith.. it’s more like registering wemakemicrosoftwindows.com

Agreed, but "bad faith" is only one of the 3 requirements that need to be proved in a domain case like this.

Open source involves community. This was a website for people that actually do make Fedora. If I make packages for a Linux distro, or content, can it not be said that I help make it? Same for Windows as well. If I contribute packages for Winget or contribute on their GitHub to Windows Terminal then that is not wrong as long as I don't pretend to be that company on the site itself or represent the company in the actual content. A domain name means very little, it is the content that counts the most

> if I use the domain to sells shirts then that may not be considered fair use

Is that so? The answer seems to be in your quoted section, but infuriatingly, that contains garbled english right at the key point.

If the quote said:

without intent for commercial gain *OR TO* misleadingly divert Internet users or to tarnish Complainant's FEDORA trademark

.. then that would be a slam dunk - no t-shirt sales allowed. But it doesn't.

The way it is actually worded, it sounds more like it would be OK to sell t-shirts, as long as it wasn't being done "to misleadingly divert Internet users. But that doesn't really make sense either.

Something like Tshirt sales gets far more complicated.

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