Terms & Policies

Overview:  

Chainguard, Inc. is a venture-backed startup with the stated mission of being the safe source for open source. It is important that we maintain this reputation as a safe source through our trademarks. Trademarks help consumers distinguish a product/service from another and provide assurance as to the quality of the products/services with which the trademark is associated. While copyrights and patents are designed to incentivize creative works and useful inventions, trademarks are fundamentally concerned with this consumer production and can be licensed differently. We remain committed to open source licensing principles, which primarily concern copyright associated with software, while also signaling and protecting consumers via trademarks as to what products and services are coming from us. As such, we have created this Chainguard Trademark Use Policy to ensure that our trademarks remain reliable indicators of the qualities that they are meant to preserve and not get in the way of your ability to create and exercise your rights granted under open source and other licenses.

What are the current Chainguard Trademarks? 

Our current trademarks and services marks include: 

• Chainguard™ in connection with software tools and platform for container image registry services and related educational services.

• Wolfi™ in connection with software tools and related community services.

• Safe Source for Open Source™ in connection with software tools and platform for container image registry services

Over time, it is likely we will add to this portfolio of trademarks. 

Chainguard Images is the product(s) exclusively produced and distributed by Chainguard, Inc. Images are our collection of curated, hardened container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain. 

Wolfi is a community Linux OS designed for the container and cloud-native era. Chainguard started the Wolfi project to enable the building of Chainguard Images. This required a Linux distribution with components at the appropriate granularity and with support for gilbc. Wolfi is a stripped-down distro designed for the cloud-native era. It doesn’t have a kernel of its own, instead relying on the environment (such as the container runtime) to provide one. This separation of concerns in Wolfi means it is adaptable to a range of environments.

What is included under the Trademark Policy? 

For Chainguard, both the Chainguard and Wolfi marks are vital assets to our business, and therefore no person or entity is allowed to use these trademarks for products or services of their own (again, see our Trademark Use Policy for further details). Everyone who contributes to Wolfi keeps their copyright, licensing it to the universe under the Apache License 2.0. When someone contributes to Wolfi on behalf of an organization or company, they are responsible for securing permission to license their work under the Apache license for use in creating packages with the Wolfi string. 

The Important Details: 

• Chainguard and Wolfi are trademarks of Chainguard, Inc. Our flagship product, Chainguard Images, being an open source product does not mean you can use our marks for your own business or in any commercial manner. 

• We want people to take our Images and build upon them; that is their primary purpose. You can take our Chainguard Images, build upon them, and publish the containers, however, you must clearly delineate which software is installed by you (instead of Chainguard) in such a way that is clear to vulnerability scanners and end users that you are the author of said changes to the software and not Chainguard. Further, if you attempt to rebuild our packages or images from source, you must remove all references to Chainguard and/or Wolfi. 

• For example, if you do create a distribution or package using the Wolfi string, you must remove all visible Chainguard trademarks from said distribution. If the Chainguard logo appears anywhere in the user interface, it must be removed or replaced with a different logo. Likewise, any written references to Chainguard or Wolfi must be removed. To be clear, you do not need to remove references to “Chainguard” or “Wolfi” each time they appear in source code, however, you do need to remove all references to “Chainguard” or “Wolfi” each time they appear in any plain text, human-readable files within the built packages or container images themselves.  

• You may not imply that Chainguard, Inc. has any relationship with your distribution, other than that your distribution contains some Wolfi source code. Chainguard, Wolfi, and the Chainguard Images product, build systems, quality control, and overall infrastructure are owned exclusively by Chainguard, Inc. As a result, you may not suggest or imply that your distribution is the same as Chainguard’s or performs the same functions in the same way. To be clear, the Wolfi string is equally available to everyone to use, modify, and distribute, you just have to follow the Trademark Use Policy rules. 

Will there be future changes to the Trademark Policy? 

Chainguard reserves the right to terminate or modify permission at any time in order to maintain the high quality and goodwill that is associated with the Chainguard Marks. 

How can I request more information about the Trademark Policy? 

For a fuller understanding of the rules as it pertains to our Trademarks, please see our Trademark Policy. If you have questions regarding our Trademark Policy, would like to use the Chainguard Marks in ways not covered in the Trademark Policy, or believe the Chainguard Marks are being used in a way that violates our Trademark Policy, please reach out to us at legal@chainguard.dev.