Re: opie trademark

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 12:40:25PM -0400, Benjamin Long wrote:
> This infighting and bickering is pointless.

Amen.

> Right now, the Opie project seems just about dead. If it's not dead already
> this disunity with surely kill it.

I don't think it is dead. But it is definitely in life support mode.

> If something can be done to revive the project by bringing it up to date,
> hence not letting all the development time that went into Opie go to waste, I
> say it's worth it.

What Lorn is doing is not necessarily updating it. It is more like
taking the itch that was the genesis of Opie (the need for a better and
more open Qtopia/palmtop environment) to Qtopia 4.

> As for why this work wasn't done on the hh.org servers, I
> have no idea, and I really don't care.

Well, I personally don't mind what people do with Qtopia 4. And I can
see the technical reasons why Lorn would want to use another community
resource then handhelds.org to scratch his itch on Qtopia 4. But it is
obvious that people running linuxtogo and people running handhelds.org
don't get along. So taking something that has largely been part of the
handhelds.org community and reusing it at linuxtogo is not something I
want to see happen. All it can do is lead to confusion. And it could
potentially worsen the relationship between said people.

> If the core Opie developers are really upset by the use of the name
> tied to the server change, then they can easily do something about it.

Upset, not really. Trying to avoid a train wreck, definitely.

> Start working on Opie @ hh.org. Bring it up to date.

Paul E and I (and a few others - you know who you are) have been
attempting to do that but not necessarily on the Qtopia 4 code base.

> Start building it on Qtopia-Core. Expand. Otherwise, all this is doing is
> holding active developers back.
> When the day is done, the code speaks for itself. It doesn't matter what it's
> called.

Absolutely. The code speaks for itself. Lorn et al are welcome to make
their augmentation of Qtopia 4 be the best of class for palmtop
environments. But since I intend to work on the original code base at
handhelds.org, I would appreciate it if Lorn called his work something
else. It would really help in differentiating the original Opie from
what he is doing if he complied. Of course I am asking for my own
personal reasons and not on behalf of the other current developers. So
Lorn will do what he wants with that. I thank Lorn and Benjamin and all
of the other originators and developers who have made Opie my favorite
palmtop environment. I hope to do nothing but to honor their good work
in what I am aiming to do on Opie.

Thanks

E

-- 
Erik Hovland
mail: erik_at_hovland.org
web: http://hovland.org/
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