If you've been watching Citrix lately, you have probably seen the Xen branding and the product push with the XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenServer product lines. Good marketing to be sure, capitalizing on the Xen name in the virtualization space. But the latest news coming out of the Xen.org Web site is that a new Xen Trademark policy is coming to town. So, what exactly does that mean? Well, without getting a legal If you’ve been watching Citrix lately, you have probably seen the Xen branding and the product push with the XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenServer product lines. Good marketing to be sure, capitalizing on the Xen name in the virtualization space.But the latest news coming out of the Xen.org Web site is that a new Xen Trademark policy is coming to town. So, what exactly does that mean?Well, without getting a legal department involved, it sounds like companies creating products around the Xen hypervisor technology won’t be allowed to brand their products as a “XenThis” or “XenThat” product name. However, they will be allowed to name it “Product X for Xen®” or “Product X for the Xen® hypervisor.” Why is that? I’ll let Citrix legal explain it. This is from the Xen.org Web site, and it discusses the Xen Trademark policy update:Citrix, in conjunction with the Xen AB, seeks to protect the trademarks associated with the open source Xen® hypervisor in order to both strengthen the public’s identification of the Xen marks and prevent the widespread and unregulated use that can sometimes lead to trademark genericide. This is for the benefit of all those in the Xen community who distribute and contribute to the open source project, and not just for the benefit of Citrix. It is for these reasons that the Xen Trademark Policy was originally put forward. With respect to the limited restriction on product names combining “Xen” with another name, Citrix believes this restriction is in keeping with XenSource, Inc’s longstanding use of “Xen” in the names of the company (“XenSource™”) and its flagship product (“XenServer™”), which is now marketed by Citrix. Citrix believes, and hopes that the community understands, that use of other Xen-combined names might confuse potential users of Citrix-sourced products as to the source of a particular product or service. Since all Xen-based commercial products on the market today (of which Citrix is aware) from other vendors are all non-Xen branded, Citrix believes that this is the appropriate time to clarify this issue. … Ultimately, the Xen Trademark Policy benefits all those who use or assist in the development of the Xen® hypervisor, in part by maintaining the value of the Xen Marks. Citrix must police the marks in accordance with the Policy and in conjunction with the Xen AB in order for everyone to see value in their use as product identifiers. Otherwise, the trademark can become a generic term (see escalator or aspirin in the U.S.) at which point anyone could call their hypervisor “xen” regardless of the source of the hypervisor.So, whether you believe this trademark policing is really for the greater good of the community or not, it sounds like the new policy is just around the corner after final community inspection. Although I must admit, I’m not exactly sure how the community votes on this policy change. So the other question that people have been raising after reading this announcement is, “Who owns the trademark?” Stephen Spector, Senior Program Manager of Xen.org, told me that the short answer is that Citrix owns it because of the acquisition of XenSource. But Stephen added that Xen itself is a still a community, open source project with no ownership.After doing a little searching, I saw that Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix Systems, posted on the old XenSource blog, “XenSource is the legal owner of the Xen(tm) trademark. Xen is a code base for a freely available, industry standard hypervisor that is licensed under GPL and developed collaboratively by a community of contributors using the open source model.”And after poking around the old XenSource FAQs, I found the official XenSource answer to the question, “Who owns the Xen Brand?” The answer: XenSource owns the Xen™ brand, as well as various other related marks, including the Xen circle logo, the “Includes Xen” logo, the XenEnterprise™ and XenSource™ trademarks, and various applications to register those marks in the United States and around the world. Both the unregistered and registered marks of XenSource are protected under applicable trademark and other laws. It went on to say: As more thoroughly described in the remainder of this document, XenSource offers vendors a royalty-free license to use the “Includes Xen” logo in connection with the delivery of a Faithful Implementation of the Xen hypervisor to market, provided that the vendor agrees to contribute all of its modifications (whether bug-fixes or feature enhancements) to the Xen open source project for the benefit of the community, and has otherwise complied with applicable license conditions.So really, it doesn’t appear as if a whole lot is changing or that the new policy is pulling the rug from under people. What do you think about it? Are you creating a Xen based product? Are you upset that you can’t call it “XenSomething“? Or are you ok with calling it “Something for Xen”? *** UPDATED ***Xen.org has just posted a final Xen Trademark Policy that has been approved by the Xen Advisory Board.As of right now, Stephen has posted a Word document containing the approved policy, but has a PDF coming next week. Software Development