Re: opie trademark

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 05:17:42AM +1000, Lorn Potter wrote:
> > > 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!

If the project "OpieII" were actually different by name, it would not
contain the word/acronym "Opie" in it.

> > > 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.

That is only true if you think that the handhelds.org community is
wholly separate from the Opie community. I don't see that as the case. I
see the Opie community as being part of a larger handhelds.org
community.

> G.F does not speak for "the community" and who gave him the right to 
> try and trademark our project name?

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

> 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.

> > > 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?

> 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
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

-- 
Erik Hovland
mail: [email protected]
web: http://hovland.org/
PGP/GPG public key available on request

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