Re: opie trademark

On Thursday 31 May 2007 06:17, Erik Hovland wrote:
> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 05:17:42AM +1000, Lorn Potter wrote:

>
> No, he doesn't speak for the community. Neither do you.

Sure I do. I have been around in the opie project longer than most. That gives
me a right to speak on behalf of the opie community.

> And his name
> only appears on the application because someone has to be named.
> Unfortunately the USPTO process for trademarking requires that an
> individual and not a corporation be listed in the application. Which
> means it looks like George is doing it. But if the trademark application
> is granted handhelds.org will own the trademark.

handhelds.org did not have rights nor permission to try and trademark the
project name.

>
> > He didn't even ask or even mention that he was trying to do this first!
>
> No, handhelds.org didn't ask the Opie community what they wanted to
> protect. And this is unfortunate. In seeing how badly the GPE situation
> escalated, I can see why handhelds.org is trying to protect as much of
> the community as quickly as possible.
>
> But not organizing more of the community is a problem with this. Of
> course it is the same problem you have with trying to use the Opie name.
> You do not have permission from the community.

yes, I think I do. At least I asked, in case you missed it.
http://www.handhelds.org/hypermail/opie-devel/31/3157.html

>
> > > > 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.
>
> OK, then why use the name w/out permission from the community?

I didn't. I asked first.
.

>
> > 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!
>
> You keep saying us. handhelds.org is a community. It is trying to
> protect the trademark of one of its sub communities. What is the Opie
> community and do they actually think this is a good idea or not? I for
> one want a clearer boundary between the Opie community and anyone else.
> Which means, if Opie is part of the handhelds.org community and there
> are people in another community who are actively hostile to people in
> the handhelds.org community, Opie should not be associated with that
> community. But on top of that we as the Opie community are required to
> do our own enforcement if we assert the tradename as ours.
>
> > How can you not see that this is the problem?!
>
> I can definitely see the community not wanting its tradenames and

handhelds.org is not run by the community. it is run by George France. He is
not part of the oie community.

> trademarks abused and diluted. I am not sure who the community is, would
> you feel better if a corporation named "Opie" owned those trademarks and
> that corporation was made up of the Opie developer community?
> What if that entity did exist and denied you permission to use its
> trademarks? Is that any different then handhelds.org owning the
> trademarks if handhelds.org is a larger community that the Opie
> community belongs to?
>
> I am just not sure I agree that handhelds.org is taking anything. Those
> trademarks have been used on handhelds.org for years, the Opie community
> is a part of the handhelds.org community. Having handhelds.org take care
> of this legal issue for the Opie community sounds like they are helping,
> not being hostile.
>
> > > 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?
>
> I don't consider the Opie community as being separate from
> handhelds.org. This is handhelds.org protecting its tradenames and
> trademarks and not George France individually. Because of these things,
> I do not agree that your statement is true.
>
> > > > > > 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.
>
> Well, then let me add - if someone has a shell account on handhelds.org,
> please act with good judgement.
>
> > > 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 don't know if you have defined the "rightful owners" at all. I see in
> previous threads that you have named authors who are no longer active.
> The only one we have heard from was Benjamin. But if the people who are
> listed as authors and who have been currently active get together and
> oppose this application and stop the ownership, then I don't see how
> handhelds.org can disagree.
>
> And I still do not see handhelds.org being separate from the Opie
> community. But prove me wrong.
>
> > > 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 will explain to George that he does not own the trademarks. But I
> don't see the handhelds.org community being separate from the Opie
> community.
>
> > 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!
>
> Sourceforge has a mission of being a project resource and not a
> community. I don't consider Sourceforge to be the same thing as
> handhelds.org. I see handhelds.org being closer to debian or FSF in that
> regard. And the FSF does own the trademarks for the authors of the code.
> They even hold the copyright.
>
> E
Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 16:40:36 EDT