Re: opie trademark

Hi all,

First, excuse me for top-posting.

There has been a suggestion that the 'community' should make
themselves heard....

My qualifications:
- User and alpha tester of opie since 0.7.x
- I sent a one line patch to a makefile once
- I have provided help to newbies on the mailing lists - when I could ;-)
- I am an opie advocate - ask anyone I know who has a PDA that could run opie

I don't see any problem with using opieII as a project name iff. the
long term goal is to provide a better/slicker and updated version of
opie in time for whenever Qt3 starts to be deprecated. When I pick
between the lines of this discussion, this seems to be the case.

I would object, from a project stability standpoint, to it being
hosted on a site which has open conflicts with hh.org for the simple
reason that they (hh.org) have supported, call it 'hosted' if you
like, both familiar and opie for so many years.

Regarding the trademark discussion, I'm no lawyer but, I think the
trademark is already owned by the community by virtue of it's origins
and use in public discussion for such a long time. There should be no
legal requirement or incentive to make it a registered trademark.

If George can iterate (or re-iterate) his motives for trying to make
it a 'legal' trademark then that might help clarify things - for me at
least.

Everard

p.s. feel free to flame me, but I feel like I am part of the community
hence I am just responding to the RFC. and remember i said "I'm no
lawyer" :-)

pps. if you don't feel I am part of the opie community, feel free to
ignore me but, I don't feel that it's just the devs who make the
community.

On Thu, 31 May 2007 08:18:42 +1000, Lorn Potter
<llornkcor_at_optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> On Thursday 31 May 2007 07:22, Erik Hovland wrote:
>> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 06:40:31AM +1000, Lorn Potter wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>> By your requirements then George France has the same right to speak on
>> behalf of hh.org. He has been around hh.org longer then most. If the
>> Opie community is part of the hh.org community, he can speak for it.
>
> No, he can't. He is not a developer in the Opie project. He (handhelds.org)
> only hosts the Opie project.
>
> Same thing about sf.net, they cannot speak on my behalf for the projects I
> have there, as they are not a part of the community.
>
>
>>
>> And you were given permission publicly by one person:
>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.opie.devel/3885
>>
>> While you received an objection from at least two people:
>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.opie.devel/3897
>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.opie.devel/3898
>>
>> Is that permission?
>
> If decisions are made on the construct that everyone has to agree to
> something, then no decisions would ever get made. As the longest standing
> developer in Opie, I took it upon myself to be the leader and make an
> executive decision. This decision was made by not only taking into account
> those feelings expressed publically, but those expressed privately as well,
> as well as the situation regarding hosting services rendered.
>
> I believe I made the right decision for Opie and the next generation of Opie.
>
> I do not believe Opie based on qtopia 1 & 2 is obsolete, it is stable, fast
> and can be made to run on many devices.
>
>
>
>
>> > > > 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.
>
> hmm. ok. so that I am in both communities I gave the other community
> permission to use the name Opie, only if there was a distinction made..
> hence "opieII".
>
> My whole contention is that no one has the right to try and trademark a name
> they do not own the rights to.
>
>
>> > >
>> > > > 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 o[p]ie community.
>>
>> George is the CEO and the official admin. But he is not handhelds.org.
>> There is a community there.
>
> By this line of thinking Haavard Nord is a part of the Opie community as
> well...
>
> The handhelds.org community is not necesarily part of the opie community, but
> the opie community _is_ part of the handhelds.org community.
>
>
>
>>
>> E
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>

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Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 20:46:25 EDT