The "Open Usage Commons" launches

Google has announcedthe creation of the Open UsageCommons, which is intended to help open-source projects manage theirtrademarks. From theorganization's own announcement: "We created the Open UsageCommons because free and fair open source trademark use is critical to thelong-term sustainability of open source. However, understanding andmanaging trademarks takes more legal know-how than most project maintainerscan do themselves. The Open Usage Commons is therefore dedicated tocreating a model where everyone in the open source chain - from projectmaintainers to downstream users to ecosystem companies - has peace of mindaround trademark usage and management. The projects in the Open UsageCommons will receive support specific to trademark protection andmanagement, usage guidelines, and conformance testing." Initialmembers include the Angular, Gerrit, and Istio projects.