What is 'reasonable attribution' of OFN on white-labelled instances?

Continuing the discussion from OFN Community Pledge - v1.0 - 1 June 2017:

To get the Pledge completed and the sign-on process started, the community agreed to an ambiguous placeholder on the topic of attribution (quoted below) with detail to be discussed further and agreed here.

Associates and Service Providers have additional responsibilities to contribute value back to the Commons, as per Item 6. In addition to licensing requirements, Associates providing a white-label OFN service are expected to ensure a reasonable public attribution of the contribution of the Open Food Network Commons.

So now we need to work out what is ‘reasonable attribution’ on a white-label instance?

####Wording?
Some (adapted) possibilities suggested by@CynthiaReynolds were:
what would we expect Associates (white-label instances) to clearly state/link on their websites?

  • “Powered by Open Food Network”
  • “An Associate of the Open Food Network” / “An Open Food Network Associate”
  • ?

####Where should it appear?

  • front page
  • about us
  • all pages served by OFN code
  • ?? etc

It is perhaps useful to look at an example, so perhaps consider these questions alongside the work @woakes070048 is doing to re-brand this server [here]
(http://staging.harvest2order.com/).

I think the footer is perfect place for proper attribution, what about changing the footer order and text to read:

Company Name is powered by the Open Food Network - a free and open source software platform.
Content is licensed with CC BY-SA 3.0 and code with AGPL 3 - Find us on GitHub

by moving the GitHub link down, it leaves the Associates Terms and Conditions separate from the OFN details.

my personal preference would be to have logo that accompanies it in the footer, something like these examples:



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I guess the GitHub link also needs to be pointed to the white label repository, and not the OFN repo?

And it is required by the AGPL license to publish its (forked and modified) source code am I right?

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I really like this suggestion @CynthiaReynolds, and I like the first ‘logo’.

Totally agree, AGPL is there for a reason…

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I agree with the attribution like “Affiliate of the Open Food Network” or “Powered by Open Food Network”, but I think there should be different options for the “look” of it… for example is the OFN logo necessary here ?
I guess if the white label user has his own brand strategy maybe he doesn’t want another logo on his home page which can be understandable.
But I agree that in the footer if should clearly state that it’s powered by the OFN and point to the white label source repo, so I would see something in that example like:

Read our Terms and conditions | Find us on GitHub [here should be the forkedand modified version of Harvest2order]
Harvest to Order is a free and open source software platform [I guess this is true as given the AGPL licence it has been published also with AGPL licence so open source], powered by the Open Food Network [link to source white label original repo]. Our content licensed with CC BY-SA 3.0 and our code with AGPL 3.

OR have the suggested logo as a side…

For me the minimum we can require is this mention in the footer, even if no OFN logo.

Sorry to be late into this discussion but my first quick response is why on earth would we not all want to shout about being part of/ powered by/ associated with OFN and give full credit to all the time and creativity that has made it what it is and what it will become. Our new OFN UK home page will make this very clear.

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I understand your point, but I think the white label users might have a different agenda, I mean, if they want to build a strong brand, they don’t want to risk any confusion by adding another brand. The French potential big client for example, if they were going for a white label version, I don’t think they would like to have another logo mixing with theirs. Marketing strategies can vary from one white label user to the other, some might be super activists and claim their belonging to the OFN, some might be more in their own marketing view and would put a more quiet attribution. I am not in favor of imposing every white label user to claim widely their connexion to OFN, but I’m in favor of asking a minimum requirement in terms of attribution. If they want to do more that’s fine :slight_smile:

I personally agree with @NickWeir , we’ll probably use a different brand for our instance http://katuma.org but we absolutely want to make it very clear that we’re OFN affiliates and we’ll be proud to have the OFN logo in all our communication. I think this is important, it’s not just software deployed in some server.

I think there is a confusion here @enricostn, you are an affiliate, not a white label associate, so you, you do want to claim your belonging to the OFN, but white label associate is not affiliate…

@MyriamBoure yeah you’re right, sorry. My brain probably cannot accept the whole white label thing :smile: