How the Power of Community Prevails — It’s Not Only About the Code

Keynote by Pamela Chestek

GNOME was confronted with an unfortunate situation — Groupon, a company that offers coupons for local businesses, launched a hardware and software “platform” that it decided to call GNOME and filed a number of US applications for the trademark. It was going to be financially overwhelming for the GNOME Foundation to formally oppose the applications, 28 of them in all, as it would be for any small business.

But the GNOME community isn’t any ordinary business. The GNOME community, joined and supported by the greater FOSS community, successfully stopped Groupon dead in its tracks. We’ll hear the tale, including how the community was able to coordinate and combine efforts in a way that had a significant impact on Groupon and how the community’s core values affected the dynamics of the negotiations in GNOME’s favor.