On April 6th, 2023, the Rust Foundation released an initial draft of an updated Rust Trademark Policy via a feedback form open to the public. Both the 10-day consultation period and the Rust Trademark Policy draft were created in a collaboration between the Rust Foundation, Rust Project Directors, the Trademark Working Group, and a legal counsel with extensive experience in drafting open source policies. Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback on the Rust Trademark Policy draft over the past 10 days. The form was closed on April 16 at 5 PM PDT.
Proceeding With Transparency #
During the consultation period, it became clear that many people in the Rust community had questions, concerns, and confusion surrounding the policy draft and the groups involved in overseeing it. While we have only just begun the process of carefully reviewing your feedback, we understand that the process of drafting the Rust Trademark Policy should have been more transparent and we apologize for that.
The consultation phase of the policy drafting process was intended to give Rust community members the opportunity to review the first draft of the Trademark Policy and express their questions, concerns, and comments. This process has helped us understand that the initial draft clearly needs improvement. In the next phase, we will provide more progress updates and work to address the concerns that were raised. While our review of your feedback has just begun, it is already clear that there are many valid critiques of the initial draft. We will address those critiques in the next version of the policy.
Next Steps: Feedback Review, Revision, & Public Report #
We know people are eager to see their feedback addressed in the next version of the Trademark Policy. We intend to address as much of the feedback as possible, but we won’t be able to discuss specific changes until after we’ve reviewed the feedback with our legal counsel. Again, we are aiming to be more transparent during this next phase as we work on the next draft, but this will take time and we ask for your patience.
Now that the feedback form is closed, the Rust Trademark Working Group, the Rust Foundation, and Rust Project Directors will thoroughly review your feedback together. As promised, we will share a report of the general nature of the feedback submitted as soon as possible. After we have conducted a collaborative review of all feedback, the Rust Foundation, Rust Project Directors, and Trademark Working Group will begin holding initial meetings with our legal counsel to address key feedback areas and recommended revisions in the new policy draft. We want to reiterate that we will not put any policy into effect until we have something that both the Rust Foundation and Rust Project leadership are satisfied with.
The Rust Foundation, Rust Project Directors, and Trademark Working Group will work together to ensure that the community is as informed as possible as we work towards implementing necessary feedback.
Thank you again for participating in the process of revising the initial Rust Trademark Policy draft. We are grateful to work with a community that is active in advocating for what they want to see in such a policy.