> The transferable agreement stipulated that each project must display the following text on their web site: [...]

Looks like Cornell-UVA satisfied this by placing it on their about page. Red Hat on the other hand hid it on a dedicated legalese page nobody will read: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/

Not a good look IMO.

So first of all IAARHL (and I do a lot of work supporting Fedora) but IANARHTL. That said, I have seen the actual agreement (but many years ago), which predates my arrival at Red Hat by some years, but don't have immediate access to it and am disinclined to hunt down a copy solely because of this thread. However, my recollection of it is that it was quite a bit more specific than the Cornell-UVA paraphrase as to where the parties expected the notice to appear. My further recollection is that it was the Cornell-UVA FEDORA that was not really complying with the letter of the agreement as to that issue, rather than the Fedora Linux Fedora, essentially the opposite of what you're saying. To settle this we'd have to get the agreement and do some Wayback Machine research, which I'm also disinclined to do at the moment.

Now, as to why it's on the Fedora Legal Docs site today, that's because a few years ago we undertook a significant migration of all "legal" content from the basically deprecated Fedora Project wiki to the newly created Fedora Legal Docs site. In general, such material is now much easier to find than it was in the wiki era (where it was spread across multiple wiki pages). I don't know when the trademark notice first came to be placed on the Fedora wiki, which itself didn't always exist, but I believe when Cornell-UVA and Red Hat signed the agreement, Fedora may have still been using a redhat.com site.

Yeah, I believe this is correct from the legal standpoint, and as long as both parties are okay with it, it’s alright with me.

My point is: Fedora is a great project, but it’s also so much more popular than FEDORA (I assume a lot of HN readers haven’t even heard about this second one before). It would be nice to mention them in just a tiny bit more prominent way – say, at the bottom of about page. But it’s really not a big deal either way.

Due to their comparative popularity, it makes complete sense to me. You don't have people in HN comments for a new Fedora release going "Wait is this about the Digital Access Project?"

What does "not a good look" even mean in this context? Getting tired of this phrase's overuse tbh. "Think of the optics" fell into disuse and I can't wait for this one to join it.

> What does "not a good look" even mean in this context?

it's a kind way of saying they're being assholes?

I wouldn’t go as far as saying they’re being assholes. Fedora is a nice project after all. It’s just a bit sad to see the asymmetry here, especially since Fedora is so much more well known than FEDORA.

A sibling commenter is right though: the Legal page is linked from the footer, I was looking in the wrong place.

Red Hat is the bigger party here. Their minimization of this issue seems a little like bullying.

There is no issue except the one third-parties (such as HN commenters) are making out of it.

Fedora and FEDORA reached an agreement a long time ago. Unless I missed something, neither party has disparaged the other in that time. The parent comment is making drama out of literally nothing. Neither side cares so why is parent OP trying to stir shit up?

As the kids say, "not a good look."

> not a good look

Directly linked from every page as Legal in the footer. What do you try to say; it almost feels you imply docs.fp.o is obscuring it?

I stand corrected. I got lost in a huge amount of links in the footer of the homepage, but it is indeed linked to from another footer (which is, indeed, present on every page).

> associated with open source software for digital object repository systems and that Red Hat could use the name when it was clearly associated with open source computer operating systems.'

If it's as worded, I'm surprised Fedora Directory Server didn't end up being a problem for RedHat, as its not an OS, and you could call it a digital object repository system, I guess.

Or maybe thats why they re-branded it as 389 Directory Server?

I'm pretty sure it's not why it was rebranded; the timing doesn't make sense since the rebranding occurred several years after the trademark coexistence agreement.

The curious question though is why 389 was formerly called Fedora Directory Server. From what I've been told by someone who was around at the time (as I wasn't), it's because Red Hat went through a very brief period where it experimented with using the "Fedora" brand as a sort of general "upstream of Red Hat, sponsored by Red Hat" sort of community brand. This was I think quickly rejected as a bad idea but Fedora Directory Server was apparently the one (for a while) surviving example of the experiment. I imagine that the reason for the rebranding was that it was confusing to use the "Fedora" name at a certain point because the directory server project never really had anything particularly to do with Fedora (apart from the connection to Red Hat).