i agree with @gottabeJay that the Zcash trademark policy is overly restrictive and asking for branding permission in a by design permissionless p2p system is contradictory.
Bitcoin does not have a legal moat around the brand bitcoin, nor does it need to, since the network effect speaks for itself. You scare new users that do grassroots marketing away or build hurdles that ruin the motivation to do so.
Also it eats ppls time and Zcash funds, just read lawer stuff in A Solid Future for the Zcash Trademark - zcash foundation
Bold thesis, but the corporate stench of Zcash is actually what hinders ZEC adoption. You are less run by community but a founders reward paying the organisation on a regular, and if things are wrong, well we get paid anyway attitude.
There is a need for zcash grassroots movement, that does not care about lawyering up, restrictive licenses, and regular pay instead of pay on deliveries only.
In practice:
- transparency: post detailed spending of the founders reward, down to the actual employee receiving it (pseudonym spreadsheet) in a uniform, easily accessible format for ZF and ECC & others receiving.
- in parallel do 4x polls that are non-binding to gauge community sentiment on if spending good or wasted. Later the polls might become https://snapshot.org/ like binding proposals with binding spend on the founders reward.
- retract TM and replace restrictive source code licenses by MIT/BSD even GPL
You want adoption and users, while actually asking for peasants.