As we move into 2014, the Association staff and the Drupal.org Working Groups are focused on increasing the velocity of improvements we can make on Drupal.org. One important part of this process is creating local Drupal.org Development Environments. Part of that project intersects with an issue raised earlier this year by Lewis Nyman - creating a Public Repo of the BlueCheese Theme.

This week Melissa Anderson, Lewis Nyman, Tatiana and I got together to talk about the best path forward for creating a scenario that allows us to distribute the theme in a public repo. The goal is clear - make BlueCheese easily available and accessible to the community, removing one more hurdle to faster and better Drupal.org development.

While the goal is clear, there are a couple of concerns to untangle before we can move forward:

• Trademarked items: As most of us are aware, the trademark “Drupal” belongs to Dries Buytaert, who has granted permission to the Association. We can not distribute trademarked elements in a publicly available version of BlueCheese without a proprietary licensing agreement.
• Harming the Project by maligning the Drupal experience: If we release the theme publicly as-is, it would be possible for anyone to use the BlueCheese theme on their own sites, creating more web properties that look and feel like Drupal.org. The chance of phishing or other illegal scam is low, but the the risk of sites that could confuse new users and contributors is pretty high. 

I met with our lawyers last week, and they confirmed that we have two possible directions that we go in to address these concerns. Both paths solve the problem, but they each reflect a different set of values and assumptions. I point this out because I want to make it clear how much I, and everyone at the Association, care about the values implicit in the choices we make. 

What we choose to share says a lot about how much we value transparency. How we choose to include community opinions in our planning speaks to how much we value consensus. How we choose to address trademark and licensing issues speaks to how much we value openness.

Though our community and this organization currently lacks a written values statement (it’s on the agenda for the Association in December and January), that doesn’t mean we don’t already have values we can articulate, and our choice here reflects that.

So here are the two paths we can choose to pursue:

1. Legal protection: Developing an end-user license agreement makes it easy for us to distribute the theme with the trademarked items, and with clear and specific use cases defined. Though this direction can not PREVENT the misuse of the theme, it would provide a stronger case for us to take action if necessary. The downside, of course, is that any End User License Agreement is not compatible with GPL, and our values. We’d have to host BlueCheese somewhere other than Drupal.org
2. Technical remedies: We can choose to separate the trademarked elements (logo, colors, etc.) from the BlueCheese theme and make this stripped down version of the theme publicly available so that no license is required. It can be hosted on Drupal.org and distributed publicly. However, determining which specific elements need to be removed, and executing this in a way that preserves the elements important to developers may not be easy. This is the more time-consuming route to take.

On our call, we all agreed that pursuing the technical solution is the right thing to do in this case. Though more difficult, and in some senses riskier, it aligns with our values as a community. To move forward, Lewis has donated his time to develop a version of the theme without trademarked elements that we can test. Lewis will be presenting these changes in a development environment so that the community can view the site and see what those changes might mean for them.

We’ll need your help to make this a success. Please watch the discussion and share your feedback. And, if you have a moment, please thank Lewis for his work on this, as well as Melissa Anderson, Michael Halstead, and Jeff Sheltren for their heavy lifting.

Flickr photo: popartichoke