Update description (and maybe icon?)

[adalinesimonian]

We keep finding instances of users installing the wrong Stylelint extension, even recently. This confusion has resulted in unexpected behaviour for users, lost time triaging and investigating bugs that don't relate to our code, and in one instance, even data loss (#142 — though at least, in that case, it was regarding the shinnn extension which was removed, thankfully). Ideally, we'd get other extensions off of the marketplace, but even then, it seems at least in one case that people that have forked the project intend to keep the forks around.

I propose that we reduce this confusion over which extension is official by updating the extension's description, similar to what we've done in the readme. Perhaps we could also make it more visually prominent in the marketplace with a new icon that isn't just a rectangle with the logo thrown into it.

There's a myriad of ways we could do this; as a starting point for this discussion, I threw an example together in a few minutes. I based the changes on other linters' branding on the marketplace, such as ESLint.

Arguably where most users will find and install the extension is directly through VS Code. Here's one way that could change:

And here's what it would look like on the marketplace website:

[jeddy3]

It's a shame it's like this, but great ideas to help alleviate at least some of the confusion.

Love the:

• evolution of the logo to include the squiggly red line as that's specific to editor integrations
• leading with "Offical" and then changing the order to have "Stylelint" before "Visual Studio Code"

I'd drop the Less/SCSS bit as we've really deemphasised that in Stylelint itself as it makes no guarantees of working with custom syntax.

"Official Stylelint extension for Visual Studio Code"

(We should update the README to this order too).

[ota-meshi]

I don't think we need to change the icon.
The current icon changed when this extension became the official extension for the Stylelint organization.
I'm surprised that this icon is currently used by other extensions, but I think that if we change the icon, an extension with the same icon will appear again.
I'm worried that changing the icon could be confusing to anyone who knows that the extension with the current icon is official.

[ota-meshi]

I agree with other changes:+1:

[adalinesimonian]

* evolution of the logo to include the squiggly red line as that's specific to editor integrations

Honestly, I wasn't really that married to the logo at first, but I think you bring up a great point about it making it specific to the editor. I think it might be a good change now.

* leading with "Offical" and then changing the order to have "Stylelint" before "Visual Studio Code"

I think this will have the biggest impact. With the branding change, it'll be like a refresh!

I'd drop the Less/SCSS bit as we've really deemphasised that in Stylelint itself as it makes no guarantees of working with custom syntax.

"Official Stylelint extension for Visual Studio Code"

Good point. I'm on board with this.

I don't think we need to change the icon. The current icon changed when this extension became the official extension for the Stylelint organization. … I'm worried that changing the icon could be confusing to anyone who knows that the extension with the current icon is official.

If we were only changing the description, I'd completely agree, that would be confusing. But with the description being so eminently clear about it being official, I think that if both change together, it wouldn't be an issue.

I'm surprised that this icon is currently used by other extensions, but I think that if we change the icon, an extension with the same icon will appear again.

To get the obvious disclaimer out of the way — I am not a lawyer and the following should not be taken to be legal advice. I simply encountered this scenario when working on another project and researched the topic to the best of my ability.

Trademark and copyright law are two different beasts, definitely here in the US, but also in many countries internationally (though the nitty-gritty may be different). Copyright governs the work itself, its reproduction and distribution, whereas trademarks govern the use of names or designs to distinguish the services or goods you provide from those that others provide.

If we have a logo in the repository, its copyright falls under the licence that we use, in this case, the MIT licence. However, the MIT licence, along with a lot of OSS licences (though not all), doesn't touch on trademark rights. So in other words, we can, even without registering and filing for a trademark, establish one in common law simply by using it and asserting that it is a trademark.

Mozilla, for example, includes the following notice in their repository:

These files are under the tri-license, as below. However, please note that you are not granted any trademark rights or licenses to the trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation or any party, including without limitation the Firefox name or logo.

If we include such a disclaimer here when we introduce the new logo, it would effectively bar anyone from publishing an extension with the new extension logo. If they did, without even a lawyer or any legal proceedings, we'd be able to:

1. Request that the individual/group replace the logo with another.
2. If they do not comply, file a report with the platform and have the logo removed.

I think asserting these rights is important to help us keep a lid on the confusion. Oftentimes, OSS projects forget to deal with trademark rights and down the road it ends up being quite the can of worms.

A couple resources that I read when researching this topic earlier:

• Why we trademark Open Source software and you should too, Lightmeter
• Trademarks in Open Source, Open Source Casebook, Google

[ota-meshi]

I can't explain it well, but I'm not requesting that the icon of another extension be changed to another icon 😅. I thought it was only a moment that the extension could stand out even if we changed the icon. So I thought it wasn't very effective.

[adalinesimonian]

I can't explain it well, but I'm not requesting that the icon of another extension be changed to another icon 😅. I thought it was only a moment that the extension could stand out even if we changed the icon. So I thought it wasn't very effective.

Oh, I see! I agree, I think it might not be the most effective taken on its own. I do think that it would help somewhat, just not nearly as much as the description. But I also think we should assert trademark rights, because then we can stay the only extension on the platform with that exact logo, and that might help more down the road.

Given your and @jeddy3's input, my feelings are:

• Description is the most important thing to update
• "Official Stylelint extension for Visual Studio Code" is probably what we should change it to
• Changing the logo may not make the most impact on recognizability, but it may make some small impact
• Updating the extension's logo is a nice aesthetic update and making it editor-specific is a nice branding touch
• If we change the logo, we should throw the following disclaimer in the assets folder, similar to the Firefox repository: "These files are under the MIT licence, as below. However, please note that you are not granted any trademark rights or licences to the trademarks of Stylelint or any party, including without limitation the Stylelint name or logo."
• If an extension does use the same logo, we kindly ask that they change it to something different, falling back to asking the VS Marketplace if the publisher is non-cooperative

[adalinesimonian]

I've pushed up three PRs that all tackle rebranding in different ways as a way to decide what approach we should take to resolve this issue:

• Rebrand — Option A, update description and logo, add trademark notice #303
• Rebrand — Option B, update description and logo without trademark notice #304
• Rebrand — Option C, update description, keep existing logo #305

I think having all options side-by-side makes it easy to pick what we should do. Have at it!

[adalinesimonian]

I'm pushing this back to 1.2.0 since there's no consensus on the PRs just yet.

[adalinesimonian]

We are now a verified publisher, which should help ease confusion around what extension is official! Since it looks like there isn't sufficient support currently for updating the logo, I'm closing this issue and the remaining PRs. We can revisit a branding refresh sometime in the future.