Re: opie trademark

On Thursday 31 May 2007 04:31, Erik Hovland wrote:
> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 04:00:34AM +1000, Lorn Potter wrote:
> > On Thursday 31 May 2007 03:40, Erik Hovland wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 12:40:25PM -0400, Benjamin Long wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > OpieII is not in the same situation as GPE.
>
> No one says it is. It would be nice if it didn't turn into that
> situation. Because that one is very bad.

Its different because I used a different name!

>
> > What George and handhelds.org are saying is that essentially, they own
> > the names to the projects they only hosted on their web site.
>
> I disagree. What handhelds.org is saying is that if you choose to
> be part of the handhelds.org community, handhelds.org will attempt to
> help you keep your trademarks from being misused.

No, he is saying, by trademarking "Opie", that handhelds.org ownes it. They
don't. G.F does not speak for "the community" and who gave him the right to
try and trademark our project name? He didn't even ask or even mention that
he was trying to do this first!

>
> > A big slap in the face, especially after 5 years of being with this
> > project and _then_ being told that the hosting web site is trying to
> > trademark you own work.
>
> I can see how it is hard to accept that something you worked on for
> several years is not yours to do with as you please. But you are not the
> only author nor the only "current" developer.

No, its not difficult to accept at all, that is part of community development.

But, it is not George France and handhelds.org's property either, and they
also cannot do with as they please - such as trying to trademark our project
name out from underneath us and without asking or even consulting with the
dev teams!

How can you not see that this is the problem?!

> I hope you can understand that I would like to establish some boundaries
> and guidelines on how things get used because I would like to see Opie
> and what you have called OpieII to prosper. One of those boundaries is
> that linuxtogo and handhelds.org are separate and that Opie on
> handhelds.org is continuing. I am not the one pushing the trademark
> enforcement, but I do see something called "OpieII" on linuxtogo to be a
> problem considering the hostile relationship between people who run
> linuxtogo and people who run handhelds.org.

and you do not see someone trying to trademark something that they do not
rightfully own hostile or a problem?

>
> > > > 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.
> >
> > You might be forgetting that many parts of Opie are my work as well, and
> > as far as I know, still have write access to my copyrighted materials and
> > I consider myself still a part of Opie developers, even though I have
> > less and less time to write code.
>
> I am not forgetting. In fact I thank you explicitly. I should note that
> you have brought up a significant gray area. You do have write access.
> So do many people who have not actively contributed to Opie in quite a
> few years. Does that make you a current Opie developer? This is
> something I would love to clarify. Because it is not clear to me who is
> part of the Opie community and who should have a say in this. It is
> pretty clear to me who is part of the handhelds.org community, should
> they decide? Maybe they should since Opie does not have a clear course.
> I don't know if I can answer these questions without some discussion and
> getting an audit of who has write access and authorship w/in Opie.
>
> If I may, I know you have write access to CVS and one of the issues with
> the GPE situation is that the write access to CVS was abused.

I dont know any details about it, but if something did happen to the GPE CVS,
it wasnt done though CVS, but through shell access.

> That has
> not yet happened w/ Opie. Since I am currently working on Opie, I ask
> anyone w/ write access to that CVS repository to act with good
> judgement. It would be awful if the situation escalated before we
> finished this discussion.
>
> > > It would really help in differentiating the original Opie from
> > > what he is doing if he complied.
> >
> > Hence the new name... opieII
>
> If you think this is different enough... I don't think so. If you want
> to go through the work of getting the Opie development community
> together and arranging getting permission to use the Opie trademark, I
> consider that a reasonable step forward in using it.

Opie is not trademarked. It is a process that was started. It is not yet
registered and can be opposed and given to its rightful owners - which is not
handhelds.org

>
> I consider it most unfortunate that Opie is starting to get dragged into
> the problems between other communities. I would like to work toward a
> solution. Can we do that?

explain to george and handhelds.org that they do not own the names to projects
that they hosted on their web site. Plain and simple.

I consider it unfortunate that George France is trying to trademark and use
projects names that are only hosted on his web site, especially without
consulting the projects themselves! yeah! woohoo! for the spirit of open
source!

Again - imagine is sf.net pulled this stunt! what a bunch of BS!

>
> E
Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 15:17:50 EDT