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SSH Claims Trademark Infringement by OpenSSH
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From: Tatu Ylonen
To: openssh-unix-dev@mindrot.org
Subject: SSH trademarks and the OpenSSH product name
Organization: SSH Communications Security, Finland
Sender: owner-openssh-unix-dev@mindrot.org
Friends,
Sorry to write this to a developer mailing list. I have already
approached some OpenSSH/OpenBSD core members on this, including Markus
Friedl, Theo de Raadt, and Niels Provos, but they have chosen not to
bring the issue up on the mailing list. I am not aware of any other
forum where I would reach the OpenSSH developers, so I will post this
here.
As you know, I have been using the SSH trademark as the brand name of
my SSH (Secure Shell) secure remote login product and related
technology ever since I released the first version in July 1995. I
have explicitly claimed them as trademarks at least from early 1996.
In December 1995, I started SSH Communications Security Corp to
support and further develop the SSH (Secure Shell) secure remote login
products and to develop other network security solutions (especially
in the IPSEC and PKI areas). SSH Communications Security Corp is now
publicly listed in the Helsinki Exchange, employs 180 people working
in various areas of cryptographic network security, and our products
are distributed directly and indirectly by hundreds of licensed
distributors and OEMs worldwide using the SSH brand name. There are
several million users of products that we have licensed under the
SSH brand.
To protect the SSH trademark I (or SSH Communications Security Corp.,
to be more accurate) registered the SSH mark in the United States and
European Union in 1996 (others pending). We also have a registration
pending on the Secure Shell mark.
The SSH mark is a significant asset of SSH Communications Security and
the company strives to protect its valuable rights in the SSH® name
and mark. SSH Communications Security has made a substantial
investment in time and money in its SSH mark, such that end users have
come to recognize that the mark represents SSH Communications Security
as the source of the high quality products offered under the mark.
This resulting goodwill is of vital importance to SSH Communications
Security Corp.
We have also been distributing free versions of SSH Secure Shell under
the SSH brand since 1995. The latest version, ssh-2.4.0, is free for
any use on the Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems,
as well as for universities and charity organizations, and for
personal hobby/recreational use by individuals.
We have been including trademark markings in SSH distributions, on the
www.ssh.fi, www.ssh.com, and www.ssh.org web sites, IETF standards
documents, license/readme files and product packaging long before the
OpenSSH group was formed. Accordingly, we would like you to
understand the importance of the SSH mark to us, and, by necessity,
our need to protect the trademark against the unauthorized use by
others.
Many of you are (and the initiators of the OpenSSH group certainly
should have been) well aware of the existence of the trademark. Some
of the OpenBSD/OpenSSH developers/sponsors have also received a formal
legal notice about the infringement earlier.
I have started receiving a significant amount of e-mail where people
are confusing OpenSSH as either my product or my company's product, or
are confusing or misrepresenting the meaning of the SSH and Secure
Shell trademarks. I have also been informed of several recent press
articles and outright advertisements that are further confusing the
origin and meaning of the trademark.
The confusion is made even worse by the fact that OpenSSH is also a
derivative of my original SSH Secure Shell product, and it still looks
very much like my product (without my approval for any of it, by the
way). The old SSH1 protocol and implementation are known to have
fundamental security problems, some of which have been described in
recent CERT vulnerability notices and various conference papers.
OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community
by lengthening the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1
protocols.
The use of the SSH trademark by OpenSSH is in violation of my
company's intellectual property rights, and is causing me, my company,
our licensees, and our products considerable financial and other
damage.
I would thus like to ask you to change the name OpenSSH to something
else that doesn't infringe the SSH or Secure Shell trademarks,
basically to something that is clearly different and doesn't cause
confusion.
Also, please understand that I have nothing against independent
implementations of the SSH Secure Shell protocols. I started and
fully support the IETF SECSH working group in its standardization
efforts, and we have offered certain licenses to use the SSH mark to
refer to the protocol and to indicate that a product complies with the
standard. Anyone can implement the IETF SECSH working group standard
without requiring any special licenses from us. It is the use of the
"SSH" and "Secure Shell" trademarks in product names or in otherwise
confusing manner that we wish to prevent.
Please also try to look at this from my viewpoint. I developed SSH
(Secure Shell), started using the name for it, established a company
using the name, all of our products are marketed using the SSH brand,
and we have created a fairly widely known global brand using the name.
Unauthorized use of the SSH mark by the OpenSSH group is threathening
to destroy everything I have built on it during the last several
years. I want to be able to continue using the SSH and Secure Shell
names as identifying my own and my company's products and
technologies, which the unlawful use of the SSH name by OpenSSH is
making very hard.
Therefore, I am asking you to please choose another name for the
OpenSSH product and stop using the SSH mark in your product name and
in otherwise confusing manner.
Regards,
Tatu Ylonen
SSH Communications Security http://www.ssh.com/
SSH IPSEC Toolkit http://www.ipsec.com/
SSH(R) Secure Shell(TM) http://www.ssh.com/products/ssh
"
Update: 02/14 02:44 PM by CT : I just wanted to insert my 2 bits into this story. This is a problem close to my heart: I hate getting tech support for PHPSlash. I don't care that it exists, in fact, I'm happy that it does, it fills a need and a lot of people like it. But there is no doubt that this is confusing to people, I get the bug reports to prove it. (My other peeve examples are Linux Mandrake taking a certain Linux developer's name even though they knew better, and the K5 guys naming their project 'Scoop' even tho another major Web site was created by a guy with the same name). I have no problem with any of these projects: I think all 3 of them are great projects, but if they were just a little more original there would be no confusion. Now I'd personally never go so far as to call copyright infringement, I shouldn't have to. We're all nice people here. Maybe I'm just a bit idealistic on this one.
I like the FRESH acronym another person suggested. I would also suggest:
Better Secure Telnet, or "BeST" for short.
My reason is that this clearly changes the name, as he requested, but it also implies that his closed, costly implementation has been superceded by something superior. Which it has.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
he is not complaining about the openssh ssh "product" or "protocol", merely the project name, I think.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Copyright is not about protecting information. It's about protecting its presentation.
I'm sure Mr. Ylonen holds copyright on the code that he's written but in this particular case he holds the trademark for the names "SSH®" and "Secure Shell®". I wish you fucking slashdot buffoons could sort out the difference between trademarks, copyrights, and patents. If you're interested in IP law, and you seem to be, since you're bothering to comment on this, why don't you go read the source, or in this case, the law. It's in US Code Title 15, Chapter 22. Copyrights are US Code Title 17 and patents are in Title 35.
I don't know, but I wish we could "Bring this to the attention of the apropriate authorities" (not THAT would make a fun headline) :)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It seems pretty obvious, at least among people posting here, that "ssh" is thought of as the name of a protocol first, a command second, and MAYBE a "brand name" after that.
For marketing reasons, maybe SSH, Inc might be better off changing THEIR name to something less generic.
On the "OpenSSH" side, perhaps instead of removing/changing the "ssh" part of the name, they could change the name to something like "OtherSSH" or "DifferentSSH" or something equally obviously "not the SSH, inc product".
While I've got to give the guy credit for apparently writing his own cease-and-desist letters before shoveling money on lawyers, the wording of the letter posted to Bugtraq (as reported by this Newsforge article) didn't give me a good impression. In the last paragraph he writes:
"I now ask you to also change the name ScanSSH to something else. Since you have already been notified of the trademark and have been asked to cease the infringement of the SSH trademark, I can see no other possible reason for your choice of this name than to willfully damage our trademarks and brand name."[emphasis added]
Maybe this is just standard issue legal blather, but to a non-lawyerly person like me it sounds like he's completely refusing to acknowledge the established use of SSH as a "generic" description for things involving the SSH protocol, and instead claiming everyone using it is obviously just out to "get" him.
My take, anyway...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
For the curious, the license is available at http://www.openssh.com/LICENCE. Don't blame me, I didn't misspell LICENSE.
--Matthew
This obviously implies that he did not have any problem with derived works using SSH or Secure Shell in there name as long as they were compatible with his protocal. And remember this was licensed and made before he had ever attempted to trademark 'SSH' or 'Secure Shell'! OpenSSH stays.
This sounds a lot like X10:
1) There is an open standard by the name.
2) There are many, many makers of the product.
3) There is one company with the standard as the name.
I don't see X-10 (the company, note, has a dash) going after everyone that uses the term "X10" on their equipment. In fact, when you say "X10" many people think of the company, NOT the standard. But can you use "X10" to describe your product? Would "OpenX10" be legal? Yes.
SSH is a STANDARD. When I say SSH I mean the STANDARD, not the IMPLEMENTATION. He can trademark SSH all he wants, that just means that the company is SSH, it does NOT control what the binary can be called or anything derivitive. His TRADEmark is SSH. Fine. OpenSSH's TRADEmark is OpenSSH. Your point, sir?
IN FACT, OpenSSH is different enough to NOT be "confusingly similar" to "SSH Communications, Ltd." so although he's experiencing some confused people heading towards him for OpenSSH support, that's just standard human idiocy flack and should be taken with a grain of salt.
OpenSSH does not need to change its name. While I applaud the owner of SSH Com. for this approch rather than a full legal onslaught, I disagree with his position that OpenSSH is confusingly similar to his product.
What next? Does he want the IETF standard renamed? Is that too similar? I agree with the second poster: this industry is getting more depressing as the days go by, as greedy people (not this fellow, really) hunt down their "IP" and try and milk it. <sigh>
--
"osh" is already the "Orchestrate Shell", owned by Torrent Systems.
I kinda like ONS myself.
But masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
Yes, I see your point, the problem is there is no reason that openSSH would ssh in there name were it not for its wide spread use as a noun to describe a particular protocol. For instance, what kind of protocol does openSSH implement? Well it implements the ssh protocol. In the case of IBM, there is no thing that there trademark either stands for or describes other than themselves. It has not become part of the popular culture to describe anything by the name IBM except things that belong to them. Actually, I think his claim to the SSH trademark is completely bogus; what do you think they teach students in computer science about, the SecSH protocol or the SSH protocol. That being said if you were writting a product that implemented the ssh protocol (cause that is what is called even in the RFC's, and was called well before Tatu's trademark) what would you call it (actually I have seen enough silly names that for Open Source projects that I would not be amazed by the "glaSSHouse" project (-; ). Also, look at the command ftp. Now when I speak of that command I am speaking of the general lore and RFC that have been built up about that command. There are tens of companies that have their own ftp implementation. Do you think someone should come along and trade mark it. Do you think that confusion exists between new users about who to get support for a particular version of ftp from? Tatu's basis for all of his arguments are flawed and serpentine at best.
Have you tried UNIX today, its most satisfying...
Amazing... Some people don't read the stories or the other posts. THE PROTOCOL IS CALLED SECSH. NOT SHH.
Okay? Got it? SSH is an implementation of SecSH. OpenSSH is an implementation of SecSH. Clearly, OpenSSH is leaching off the brand and name that SSH has developed. Renaming it, as they are doing to OpenSecSH, solves all these problems, and the guy is happy with that.
Crikes, why should SSH Communications have to spend time and money dealing with support for OpenSSH just because the person is confused?
Imagine that the first car was a Ford Explorer. Along comes Toyota and calls their car Toyota Explorer. This is clearly not right. This is exactly the same.
The guy has been in contact with them before to try and get them to change the name. He has not got sufficiently annoyed so as to post it on a public developers list as they will not change the name. Next step will be a lawyer, and this would not do the open source cause any good at all. He is being reasonable, think about the people who are not being reasonable?!
I know the difference between ssh and openssh, so do you. But IT consultant X running 'ssh' on a Unix box doesn't know (or care) whether it is SSH or OpenSSH - but if something is funny, or goes wrong, the first port of call is SSH, not OpenSSH.
So, the steps to be taken:
- Rename ssh in the
/etc/services file to secsh - this applies to all operating systems
- Rename OpenSSH to OpenSecSH. Already done, look at http://www.opensecsh.org/
- Change references to ssh on all websites to secsh. Only mention ssh as an instance of the secsh protocol.
- Etc....
Sorry if this is a little terse, and I doubt it will do my karma any good, but this is how I see the problem, and how I see the solution.Shell Hopefully Having no Holes
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
<PARODY> /bin/sh? :) I mean, when I first started using Linux, I thought they were the same thing, and I installed ssh and removed bash because secure looked better than bourne again and my computer stopped working. It really confused me and hurt me financially and such, as I'm sure it did the same to every other shell that creates a symlink to /bin/sh ... </PARODY>
If Open SSH is infringing upon the trademark of SSH, is SSH infringing upon the *cough* trademark? of
> The hardest part for most people would be learning to type "fresh" after their fingers are trained to type "ssh"
/bin/sh
"osh" would be easy to type: Open Secure Hwatever.
Also note that it's not a "shell" in the ordinary sense anyway:
#!/usr/bin/ssh-agent
You could remove the SH part will little damage to the concept, IMO.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
While we're offtopic and proposing alternatives to "free software" as a term... I've always thought "freedom software" would have the closest match of clarity and connotations.
;)
Freedom is the fundamental secular American virtue. It's very hard in American culture to argue that people or products should have less freedom. What is more American than more freedom in your software?
(Whereas in a capitalistic society, connotations around 'free' are more mixed. 'Free' can imply cheap/low-quality, no-free-lunch, little-profit-opporunity, etc. Freedom on the other hand is worth any price...
As far as the term "Open" goes, it's less awkward, verbally. Still, I think "Freedom Software" has harder-to-argue-against connotations, culturally. "Open" is kind of a vague word that needs plenty of explaining.
--LP
It appears that it was more of a strange patent ruling than a trademark dispute; the patent the drug ran out in 1917, and with it -- the court ruled -- did the trademark. This ruling confuses me, but I guess we can excuse it because it is old.
Check it out yourself at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/
or just a quote:
So I fess up. I was talking outta my ass again. You were right in questioning me.
I always thought of SSH as a protocol, having both commercial (ssh.com) and non-commercial (openssh) implementations. I think it would confuse people to change the name of openssh at this stage in the game. If it were going to, maybe "Secure Remote Login" (SRL) sounds like a good name to use.
How about Secure Login Access Shell, and the OpenSSH folks can call it SLASH. :-)
Jack
Gee, "sh" certainly exists in the prior art. Perhaps he is thinking that "Openssh" is meant as Open-ssh, when it's obvious to us in the know that it is really Opens-sh, which sort of describes what it does in plain old english, which is surely not trademark infringement.
I also note that he added 1 letter to a public domain program name -- "s" to "sh", wheres we added five "opens" to the same public domain program name.
We're talking about a 3 letter trademark, two-thirds of which is derivitive. It really strikes me as phenominally bizarre to then claim that the addition of four more letters is not sufficient to avoid confusion. Out of 7 letters in "Openssh", four are new, two are prior art, and only one is really original. Basing a trademark infringement on reuse of one letter seems almost laughable. Worse, the letter is "s" - that's only a single crummy point in scrabble.
I also wonder about the fact that openssh actually does have a common code base with ssh. Does that not afford it some licence to have a somewhat similar name. If a lot of the code actually is a licenced derivitive version of ssh, doesn't that implicitly grant you the right to have 42.85% of your name in common?
The kind of "probably prime" number generators that can operate in real time are pretty lousy, in my opinion, and I'd much rather trust a known good modulus and base pair.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The name Linux is protected by a trademark held by Linus Torvalds. It has been used to stop infringement in the past.
If he has been able to register the patent SSH, then there is two options for the OpenSSH project. Change the name, or challenge the trademark.
However a challenge may not be a good idea, if you erode Trademark law, what's next? I am sure slashdot is registered as a trademark. Linux, BSD, Slashdot, and others could be used by companies that are not desirable. How would you like slashdot.com to point to a porn site? etc.
IP law is a two edged sword, sometimes it rebounds and you cut yourself.
Is that just an urban legend?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Even the standards documents are unclear on what the name of the protocol is: see the list of Internet Drafts on the IETF Secure Shell Working Group page.
My take on this is that once that is done, that SSH and SSH Communications Security Corp will disappear from view just as fast as the .ARC file format and SEA Inc. did after winning their court case against PKWare and PKARC.
My suggestion for a new name would be either Protected SHell or Private SHell aka, psh (PSH). Pronounce it pea-shell.
My machines will have the OpenSSH product aliases to the new pea-shell name from now on.
Dirk
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
wookin' pa nub in all the wrong pwaces
IETF SECSH papers
It's also small enough that you can throw the binary (no DLLs or other crud needed) on a webserver so you can run it on any Win32 box with a net connection. It's nice to be able to hit Start, Run, and then punch in http://www.foo.bar/putty.exe, wait a few seconds, and then log into your computer.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
* secsh - secure remote sh - "kinda like running sh, but remotely"
* seccp - secure remote cp - "kinda like running cp, but remotely"
etc...
How about "Helix Shell"?
From what I understood it's a name much too common to have any legal hassles with it and people are so confused already
-- Life wasn't meant to be easy...
So we have a trademark registered as ssh - yet we also have an open standard called ssh and apparently a program from AT&T Unix called ssh which predates the ssh trademark. Not to mention no efforts to prevent the use of ssh (uncapitalised no registered trademark symbol) from falling into common usage. Doesn't look enforceable to me. Ask Kleenex about not protecting trademark rights.
It's not like there haven't been many Secure SHell (ssh) products on UNIX for ages and ages. I remember using them on BSD 4.1 distributions back in the 1980s.
If there's a trademark, it's yet another example of the USPTO causing trouble ... in this case,
by taking a generic term and
granting a monopoly on it to
one (relatively) undeserving entity,
rather than letting it continue to
be a generic term. ("Personal
Computer" comes to mind...)
Too bad trademark law doesn't seem to incorporate "prior art" ... though
of course, the USPTO doesn't seem to
act according to its responsibilities
in that context.
The computer industry is getting more and more depressing with each passing day. Honestly, since the command name will probably be the same regardless of the name the project uses (lets see them try to patent command names..), what can they possibly hope to gain from this aside from contempt for their litigious asses?
I'll be switching all my ssh servers and clients to OpenSSH immediately.
--
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
I understand he has to protect it or lose it, but did he originally coin the terms "SSH" and/or "Secure Shell"??
.. or whatever.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I have a proposal for a new name: "Sheesh
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
I agree. Look back at the letter, and ask yourself: Would Microsoft have asked so nicely? I believe that the company's trademark should be respected.
How about OpenScSh?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Well first of all it doesnt work right for me, and IT does crash (or rather it did untill i got SecureCRT) and Secure CRT has support for everything you would want to open a terminal connection to.
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
This may be redundant, I don't know, but I don't have time to read through all the posts. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I personally respect this company.
First, they could've started off with a really nasty lawyer letter. Instead, they start off by asking relatively politely that the OpenSSH project change it's name, and give some relatively valid reasons for this request. Rather than starting everything with a stupid lawsuit, they start with a simple request, which is not too hard to honor.
I'm not saying I think the company is in the right with their request, but they do have some valid points and went about it in a respectable manner. For the sake of avoiding a waste of time and money known as a court battle, it seems the reasonable thing to do is for the OpenSSH project to change their name.
I'm not good at figuring out names, but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a more distinct name and simply avoid unneeded hassles.
...which part did you not get? I didn't say that everything went up 30%, just that allmost all was UP...just up.
AC is AC
"SSH" is simply an acronym for "Secure Shell", how can you take a descriptive term, turn it into an acronym, and have it be any less descriptive?
There are a lot of RH7 cds out there. OpenSSH is finding its way into many places where commercial ssh will never go.
Did you read the documents that you linked up or were you just karma whoring? Each draft standard contains the following text:
9. Trademark Issues
SSH is a registered trademark and Secure Shell is a trademark of SSH
Communications Security Corp. SSH Communications Security Corp permits
the use of these trademarks as the name of this standard and protocol,
and permits their use to describe that a product conforms to this
standard, provided that the following acknowledgement is included where
the trademarks are used: ``SSH is a registered trademark and Secure
Shell is a trademark of SSH Communications Security Corp
(www.ssh.com)''. These trademarks may not be used as part of a product
name or in otherwise confusing manner without prior written permission
of SSH Communications Security Corp.
So it does very clearly state in the text of each document that "SSH®" is a registered trademark of SSH Communications Security Corp.
You still have to make it know that it's a mark... you can still protect what you do without registering the mark. THis is trademark, not patent.
not everyone is going to be a security guru right off the bat, but until you actually are able to distinguish SSH from OpenSSH, then I'm not sure why it matters as you clearly haven't passed the minimum intelligence test to use either.
Um, you don't get it. The point of the protocol is they're not supposed to be limited to security professonals, but to people without seignificant security experience and need to remotely access shells, graphical apps, perform secure copies, anbd secure FTP etc. I'd hate if anything `secure' was limited to security professionals. Wouldn't you? As you said, there's a whole heap of Telnet servers around and people who think its okay to use them (printer and router companies that don't use SSH give me the shits. They aren't security professionals. SSH discourages that behaviour.
Not really. The OSH you pointed at isn't software, so no conflict. Just like Duron is both a CPU and a brand of paint.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
What you are referring to is correct, it's called 'trade secret'. The recipe for KFC or Coke is a trade secret, and as long as it remains a secret, it can be protected quite extensively by the law. They could get the recipe back because it was possible to do so, as those who had it hadn't revealed it yet, in other words, it hadn't become public knowledge yet.
If the recipe for coke was wide public knowledge, because coke 'ignored' a threat to it for a week ro two, and everyone in the country and every newspaper had a copy in it, then they could no longer claim *ANY* trade secret protections on it. It's no longer a secret.
And no.. that has nothing to do with this case.
So, if someone wanted to use your social security number and drivers license you'd be cool with that? I doubt it. Those are things that *identify* you.
Licensing? You don't get it. He doesn't want people to confuse OpenSSH with his product.
People are being seriously confused by the name, his private requests to Theo and others have been ignored, and he has a trademark: he would be entirely within his rights to sue the hell out of them. If it were Apple or Sun, he would have done this months ago.
Let all the commercial versions of SSH know that you won't be buying their products until this is dropped: SSH Personally, I planned to buy commercial SSH for my business, especially for Windoze clients to Unix/Linux machines, but now I won't.
Well, those suggestions were mostly a joke. However, I'd point out that "GNU" is not considered to infringe on UNIX, so I think GNASSH would be considered safe as well.
As for the ASS thing, I think you completely miss the cynical sense of humor that most people have. Admittedly, ASS is not a good brand name to establish yourself in the general populace, but it's probably a great name to establish yourself in the IT community.
sigs are a waste of space
Interesting point, but here are two areas which I think negate it's imporance
1) the user links to rsh, not ssh. If ssh installed itself as rsh by default, then yes, that might be a problem (similar to if openSSH installed itself as openSSH, not ssh, so you were reminded every time you ran the program that it wasn't the official ssh).
2) I doubt Berkeley has a trademark on rsh... it's just a minor util after all, and not an entire product, as in the case of ssh. If they had (or could) trademark the name of every minor unix utility, it would be nearly impossible to create a unix clone.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Jesus H-Bomb Fucking Christ, this man is a hero, and lamerz who are either too young or too inbred to figure it out are treating him like a devil.
Before ssh, there was nothing but telnet, an insecure nightmare. If the explosive growth of the Internet had occurred while administrators were still telnetting into their servers, we'd have many more owned servers, an exponental creep into darkness.
So we have this fantastic tool, thanks to the work of one man, Tatu Ylonen. Now he's gone and turned this work into a product, and a company. You may not respect that, but you should respect this: without his work, we'd all be owned.
So Tatu discovered fire, and he shared the fire, and then he asked people to bring him stuff to eat, in return for the fire. You may not like the last part, but you'd be eating raw whatever-the-fuck-it-is-you-just-caught in the dark without him.
Whether you agree with the letter or not, you can tell he understood the issues and the community. He's trying to break this as lightly as he can, but he does need to break it, if he hopes to keep ssh (a name he created) for his product.
As far as I'm concerned, this man was and continues to be a hero, so please just stop the ignorant criticism.
Neither name is a proper subset of the other, and that makes a big difference.
Correct me if I am wrong, but telnet used that Look and Feel LONG before SSH ever came into the picture. So getting this jokers "approval" was not an issue. Further, this was completely off the topic of the letter. It should never have been brought up. If his beef was to get the OpenSSH guys to change their L&F, then he should have SAID that.
You didn't understand the letter. Let me try and explain -- he is NOT complaining about similarity in look and feel. The point however is that there exists a possibility for confusion between the two products, and it is when such a possibility arises that one enforces trademarks. If someone made a car called "ssh" they would not easily be able to take action -- in fact the car manufacturer would possibly be able to acquire a trademark. The fact that the products in question are very similar is a key part of the dispute, and it is completely relevant to the complaint.
Example: Windows, and the Open Windows projects. I don't see M$ flipping out over that one.
IIRC, Microsoft don't have a trademark on "Windows".
It is time for companies to stop stomping on the little guys and INNOVATE instead. Instead of jumping on the litigous bandwagon, make your product BETTER than the competition.
What ????? May I remind you that the complainant wrote the original ssh and the other guys basically ripped it off ? The innovator here is the complainant, the OpenSSH guys are the copycats here.
"Secure Shell" isn't generic, it's descriptive. "Encryption-Employing Shell" would be generic.
Encrypted Terminal [Session] : et, or ets
Encrypted Terminal Connection, or rather, "so on to the next [box]": etc
Or just "esh" for Encrypted SHell, because the security is never factual anyway.
This is fun
Just my 0,02 FIM
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I'd be greatly concerned about any product called `secure Telnet'. Simple because I've been telling clients to uninstall Telnet and ban the protocols use within their networks for quite some time. I'm sure many other admins have too. `Secure Telnet' would make things confusing.
Furthermore, that isn't what SSH does - Telnet is generally used (in sites I work at) to test SMTP and HTTP servers. SSH is used as a secure method of running shells, and graphical apps (Telnet should be avoided for the first and makes the second a headache). Telnet lacks file transfer mechanisms.
register a trademark "Soft"? Does that mean Microsoft will have to change their name?
Looking at www.ssh.com, I now see that F-Secure is listed as "partners", which presumably implies a permission. This is not obvious from looking at www.f-secure.com, however. And I believe it is required that TM () and (R) (®) are acknowledged explicitly somewhere, if they are used. (That is: "various trademarks belong to their respective owners" blabla is not sufficient.)
-Lasse
Of course, someone (Reynolds?) lost the trademark on Cellophane because there was really no other way to describe the stuff. It was too new, and too unique.
I could see a trademark on SSH as in SSH-brand Secure Shell, but not on 'Secure Shell' itself.That's how you describe the entire class of products. They're shells, they're secure, it's in common usage.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
4) Free projects change their name fairly regularly without losing a users.
I dunno. I don't think I could handle it if this Chips N Dips news site ever changed their name.
Sushi? And with the blowfish as logo? That's just brilliant!
(Try searching for "blowfish sushi" on Google.)
-Lasse
I also agree. If he didn't want people basing a product off of his work he should not have made it available in the first place. At least, he could have made it, very clear that the term SSH was not to be used in any derivative products. If he had done that in the first place, I don't think that OpenSSH would have used the name OpenSSH. In any case, I think that the SSH trademark is questionable.
The debate between OpenSSH and SSH somewhat reminds me of the Debate between Guiness and GuinessSucks . . . except that OpenSSH is offering something and the XXXSucks were just complaining about XXX. My point is, if you don't confuse GuinessSucks with Guiness, why would you confuse OpenSSH with SSH?
I do believe that the guy has a right to defend his trademark. So my advice to him is defend it, so the courts can throw it out. If he happens to win, then OpenSSH can Change it's name to OpenShell or something. Until then, I don't really think that he can trademark SSH because just like RSH and the others it's a standard acronym.
SSH - secure shell
RSH - remote shell
SH - shell
BASH - Bourne Again Shell
KSH - Korn Shell
etc... but he probably has the right to try.
One interesting thing to note, who does he sue in this case, the developers? Anyone who distributs OpenSSH?
-- Juan
The creation of a competing product is not non-commercial usage, even if you give it away for free.
SHH - Shh! I'm talking to my computer
FRESH - Free Remote Encypted Shell
But coming up with a good name is the easy part, the hard part is determining if it's morally right for the author to attempt to enforce an IP claim on an IEC standard. IMHO, he should have enforced his claim *before* it was accepted as a standard, not after. Letting the standard be accepted without moving to enforce his claim should really be the same, legally, as putting the IP into the public domain.
By the way, are you reading this, Scott, please take note.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
AFAIK, this is not a copyright issue. It's a *trademark* issue. Spare the juvenile flames.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Compu$erve didn't patent the compression algorithm used by GIF. Unisys did. IIRC, Compu$erve mainly sought acknowledgment from people referring to GIFs that the name was a trademark of theirs. The other problems with GIF were the result of actions by Unisys, a company that was already on a downward spiral toward irrelevancy that must've seen patenting LZW as a means of prolonging the inevitable.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
> HSS - Host Secure Session
There might be better names, but this one appeals to me: it's short; it's reminiscent of the 'less' is 'more' naming trick; and it combines a mild slap at ssh(tm) (for putting us through this) with a nod of recognition to its common origin. What's more, there is no way this can be confused with ssh(tm).
It merits a place on the shortlist.
1) This isn't patent infringement; it's a trademark dispute. They are *very* different.
2) The original license on SSH, which OpenSSH is based on, states basically that the name 'ssh' should not be used if the derivative work is incompatable with the ssh protocols specified in the RFCs. This implies that it's OKAY to use the name ssh if you ARE compatable.
3) Under trademark law, you *MUST* defend your mark. This mark is already highly dilute; there are many software packages known to the plaintiff here that use the ssh name, and he's known about openssh for quite some time.
4) ssh is the name of a publicly available protocol as specified in the rfc's, and the name of the common unix command used to implement such a protocol, regardless of vendor. It's already diluted. THe common techie does *not* automatically associate 'ssh' with meaning 'the product from company X'. They mean the protocol.. just like ftp or anything else.
That's why he can't enforce it.
It's not about what we can get away with. If he wanted to protect the name he should have made it clear from the beginning, and that hasn't happened.
Floppies suck...they're unreliable. Besides, if you don't have a net connection with which to grab PuTTY, you don't have a net connection with which to log into your computer.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
War means killing people, Business means paying people and making money to pay with.
Murder is not acceptable. Corporate attitudes are partly caused by the ground rules of business.
You should look at the economic reasoning behind most wars. Obviously it was "acceptable" to kill a couple of hundered thousand Iraqis in order to keep oil prices down.
deus does not exist but if he does
1) No one who was "just following orders" was tried at Nuremberg. Only those "in charge" were tried.
I'll have to check a list to see that, but almost everyone except Goebbels tried that defence AFAICR...
2) Corporations are not "taking orders".
But if they are acting without the moral compulsions that an ordinary person does, obeying the letter but not the spirit of the law, that is usually their defence when thousands of people are poisoned by the company's actions -- "we were maximizing shareholder value". Sounds a lot like "just following orders" to me.
Furthermore, Tatu Ylonen seems to be a fair and decent sort of person. He didn't try to enforce his trademark until he started getting tons of annoying email and support calls from people who didn't realize they were using OpenSSH.
Why take out the trademark if you won't enforce it? Use it or lose it...
I was replying to the specific sentence I quoted, which was my I marked my post off-topic (I don't consider that Tatu has this attitude, but the attitude that poster displayed frightened me).
As regards the SSH kerfuffle, hopefully the IETF will rename the standard and then OpenSSH can change their name to match that...
deus does not exist but if he does
]> 3) This guy didn't care about the use of the
]> name OpenSSH until his customers started
]> getting confused.
]This is EXACTLY why they've lost the trademark. ]You have to defend trademarks, you can't just sit ]on your hands until you're worried about
]losing business
You've got that exactly backwards. The purpose of trademarks is to prevent brand name dilution, which is precisely what's going on here.
The New Wazoo
("It's not old!")
I just got a message yestersday from him saying that SSH2 had a reasonable license. Not for my uses. I suspect this little stunt will kill SSH for good. He had a monopoly on a very useful technology but tried to milk it for more than it was worth and that created OpenSSH. Had he not been greedy, he would have had a decent license, SSH2 would be wide spread and there would be no OpenSSH and he would have cornered the market. Now he will be competeing and with OpenSSH and I don't think he's going to win. This is going to turn out like CERN's http vs Apache.
I can't seem to find the 1.2.12 version of ssh on ftp.ssh.com in fact, the earliest 1.2.x is 1.2.0, and the one that comes after is 1.2.13.
Give it in unpronouceable symbol as it's name and then refer to it as. 'The shell formally known as OpenSSH'. Then when everyone is tired of that call it 'The Shell'.
Whaduyatink?
Depends on whether you own the trademark before the term is in common use. There are several cases where products that become popular become common language because of their popularity.
--
This is not my sandwich.
I don't know why rusty named Scoop Scoop, but I do know that Slashcode isn't alone in getting support emails for PHPSlash :p
.."
Consider this email regardling PHPNuke:
"Subject: The best nuked site Ive never seen
To: Kuro5hin.org Help
Dear Sirs of Kuro5hin,
Im journalist and Im new to PHP nuke.
Ive been visiting many nuked sites and yours is the VERY best.
I wonder if you could send my your theme files, not to use or copy it in my
site, I dont have a site, just to learn to develope a good theme.
Thank you very much, and sorry about my english.
Best regards,
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There's more to it than that. Firstly, he's claiming "Secure Shell" as a trademark. This is unlikely to fly, as it is merely descriptive of the functionality provided, and thus not capable of being trademarked.
Regarding OpenSSH - how long has that project been running? He's left it alone this long, so he's already failed to protect the name.
In any case, they have used SSH to refer to the protocol, which has always had that name (just look in /etc/services):
ssh 22/tcp # Secure Shell Protocol
The original use of the same contraction for the product name and the protocol is a fatal flaw. There is probably no way that anybody can stop them using the name of the protocol in their product name if that name is also merely descriptive.
Linux Today: Tatu Ylonen requests OpenSSH to change its name
Slashdot: SSH Claims Trademark Infringement by OpenSSH
Linux Today: Quotes the letter.
Slashdot: Links to it, surrounds it with summary like "demanding that the OpenSSH project change their name". At least there wasn't any color commentary for spin value this time, could be because Taco didn't post it.
Look, it's SSH and it's more than three letters, it's basically the same damn product. The author (not his lawyers) is personally asking to change the name to something that causes less confusion with his product that came first. Yet people are ready to string him up for this, because the reporting of it practically has him banging his shoe and screaming and sending forth the lawyers.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'm very sorry, but this is nonsense. All he has to do is officially grant OpenSSH the use of the trademark "SSH" in a legally binding contract, and there's no more question of trademark dillution.
He will then have every means to defend himself should Microsoft use the term "SSH" against his wishes.
It's a good thing that he is clear and objective about his stand towards OpenSSH, but that doesn't make his claim in itself more ethical than any other trademark claim.
Erwin
He can ask, but at best he looks like an ass. In 1995, He pretty clearly acknowleges that there are/will be other implimentations of ssh: >> if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be called by a name other than "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
So because he's a nice guy and doesn't jump on everyone like a hungry lion, we tell him to screw off?
I say we don't HAVE to let him have his way, but we should show our goodwill and do it anyway.
Or do we have any goodwill left?
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
ssh is not telnet. telnet is a specific protocol, with lots of protocol commands and options. ssh implements none of them. you can't call any ssh implementation telnet any more than you can call it ftp.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
That's a server, not a client.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I mean, c'mon. He is asking us to do so and with very valid reasons from his point of view.
Think of it this way. We ripped his code to start OpenSSH - taking his program as a gift. Even the ssh 1 license says you may do so, don't you think the author is a real nice person in doing so?
Not that we're legally bound to change the name, but don't you think it is one nice thing we can do in return of his code?
Of course, the new name has to resemble the old name so users will not be confused. And we should be given a long enough grace period to use the old name and the new name together so everyone will see "so this is what OpenSSH becomes" without scratching their heads for a bit. It's for the project's own protection, of course.
(If he's a nice peron, I think it is not his intention to use a name change to blast our recognition to oblivion. That's why we need a grace period)
Why wait for years before the enforcement? Hm...do you mean he actually have to hire a team to research for trademark infringements and find every one of them? It should not be the responsibility of the trademark holder to explicitly look for infringers. And here goes the "why wait for years" argument.
Finally, I vote for OpenSecSH. It's an excellent name. And the pun to "OpenSex" makes it even better.
So because he's a nice guy and doesn't jump on everyone like a hungry lion, we tell him to screw off?
:)
Unfortunately, because of the way that the law is written, yes.
I say we don't HAVE to let him have his way, but we should show our goodwill and do it anyway.
Although out of graditude for his releasing the code in the first place I think that it would be good for us to just change the name. Next time, remember to ask to use a trademark first.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Putty is small (so, as others have pointed out, you can put it on your www and run it from anywhere), fast, and free. What is not to like?
Similar to SMB = Samba:
SSH = Sashay
'We used to telnet into our servers, now we sashay into them'
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Be in Your Senses
Sure looks like 'permission' to me.
Errr he gave permission to derive work from SSH, and permission to call your project something other than SSH and Secure Shell.
He did not give permission to infringe on the SSH trademark.
Or are we reading a different bit of text?
"And like that
Should OpenSSH be renamed to a name that does not include the term SSH?
or maybe:
New name for OpenSSH:
It is necessary to name executable "ssh" to make it compatible with scripts and other programs that intend to use the functionality of SSH protocol, so, trademarked or not, the reason to name executable "ssh" is not to create confusion but to provide actual functionality in a compatible manner. The name OpenSSH both reflects the functionality (open implementation of SSH protocol) and provides enough distinction to avoid confusion as much as possible.
The fact that OpenSSH is a superior product is pretty much irrelevant to the issue, however it explains why OpenSSH is more popular then the original SSH now -- certainly users chosen it because they expected that it will work better and because of more liberal license, not because they thought that they are installing the original SSH.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Wrong. Nuremberg, and subsequent Nazi trials, tried a number of people who were not "in charge" in any significant sense of the Nazi regime.
So if it's compatible with the spec (which I guess it pretty much has to, to work/be usable) the above quoted text does not tell you to call it something different from "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
It rather hints at the opposite, I'd say.
I think you're missing a key aspect of the piece you quoted:
... something that is clearly different and doesn't cause confusion. ... The confusion is made even worse by the fact that OpenSSH is also a derivative of my original SSH Secure Shell product, and it still looks very much like my product
I would thus like to ask you to change the name OpenSSH to
Tatu is being very disingenuous here, because it was entirely on the back of his original ssh1 that SSH the protocol became famous, and so his commercial sales of ssh2 are primarily a consequence of the so-called "confusion" (actually a mental association) with ssh1 and hence OpenSSH by his own admission in the mind of the buyer. Nobody buys ssh2 in isolation; they buy it because it is an implementation of the SSH protocol, and very commonly the decision is also strongly influenced by community support for the protocol which arose through using ssh1 and/or OpenSSH.
In other words, it goes something like this. As a sysadmin at a commercial site, I hear from the open software and security communities that SSH the protocol is good. So, I look for an implementation, I try out either ssh1 or OpenSSH and I like it, then if I want support I buy the commercial version of ssh2 from Ylonen, otherwise I stick with ssh1 or with OpenSSH. These are all implementations of the SSH protocol, and the fact that there is a choice of implementations doesn't cause confusion --- it merely creates multiple associations, a "confusion" I "struggle" with every time that I want bread and have to decide whether to buy Sunblest or Hovis. Ssh1 and OpenSSH are no less an implementation of the SSH protocol than ssh2.
[In fact, the only source of confusion that there has ever been was caused by Tatu himself when he created a new product and made it partly incompatible with the tool that he himself had earlier called "ssh".]
OpenSSH through being similar to ssh1 continues to lay the groundwork on which Ylonen's commercial success is based, just like his old product did. Many people will buy ssh2 as a result of trying ssh1 or OpenSSH annd associating it with ssh2. It is utterly disingenuous that Ylonen should even think of preventing them from associating the SSH protocol with pre-ssh2 implementations when the whole existence of his enterprise is based on people's earlier associations between protocol and product.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I've developed a client as a school project. SSH isn't even in compliance with the RFCs.
It's just little things, like keys being sent as SSH-strings instead of SSH-mpints, or headers being formatted slightly differently. It's a good thing you can peruse and play around with the source. Otherwise, figuring out the protocol would be damn near impossible!
-----
Kvetch is Yiddish for "throw an exception" --Dr. Ron Cytron
I use SecureCRT at work, PuTTY at home. SecureCRT does have a few more features, but it costs $100. PuTTY is fast, stable (more so then SecureCRT) and as has already been pointed out, tiny. I recommend it to all my customers. Get it at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
There is already a version of SSH that is called ossh it's availible from ftp://ftp.pdc.kth.se/pub/krypto/ossh/.
The out cource one could wounder about other SSH versions as ttssh, java-ssh, NiftyTelnet SSH.
/ Balp
My guess is that Ylönen originally meant ssh mainly as a contribution to the community and didn't care much about the name. Slightly later he realized that he could make a living out of ssh and founded a company named after it.
The problem now is that SSH Communications Security (now a PLC) has grown much faster than he ever originally anticipated. Nor did he originally think OpenSSH was any kind of a problem (to him). Now the problem is that he runs a large company and their owners/legal/whatever aren't going to let him ignore other products with the name SSH any more.
This would put him in an awkward position and he is trying to ask nicely, even if he doesn't really want to ask at all, as he knows lawyers will be unavoidable otherwise.
-Late
If if had anything to with GNU that might be possible. Now it's Free real free software as in BSD licenced.
Cheers, Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
The true reason for Tatu Ylönen's claim is obvious: someone else released a version of his work that is better, free of any licensing restrictions and cost-free:
Also, as someone else pointed out, Tatu's own license specifically said others are welcome to create derived work, as long as it is clearly stated that it is such. OpenSSH clearly identifies itself as derived work, so it's perfectly Kosher.
IMHO, Tatu should realize that adding cryptology to common commandline telecom tools was a one-trick poney; it was bound to happen sooner or later and, by today's standards, is fairly obvious work. Commandline utilities contribute to the overall advancement of software development, but they are nothing precious; merely usefull.
Instead of clinging on to his 15 minutes of fame over a few commandline tools, may I recommend that he moves on to higher challenges of cryptography like IPv6 and network security, where true expertise is required and his name can be a truely powerfull statement? The same idea goes for his company, SSH Oy: you guys are network cryptology experts, so create some more, act as consultants and make money with big paying customers; causing needless turmoil among the developer community can only result in people dropping you dead and comming up with more non-compatible crypto in reaction. Be smarter than that!
PS: SSH Oy is a great company. Why else would I constantly be bugging them for a job?!
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
> I believe it was British Telecom who held the trademark for the "Yellow Pages" name,
> and Sun was forced to change the name of their product. Did it cause confusion for the user?
> Maybe some initially, while people got acclimated to the new name in documentation,
Yes, it confuses users and does so still today, usally the original version is called yp in day to day talk along users and the new version (nis+) is called nis by the users. There exists a loot of persons that don't know of this as sais nis when they med yp and don't know what yp is.
Now, is this stops OpenSSH from finding a better name is a bifferent story.
These days, OpenSSL is widely distributed (included in Red Hat 7, for example) and runs on lots of platforms; and SSL is simply a more mature protocol than SSH. SSL supports certificate based authentication at both the client and the server ends--as normally used, it's much less vulnerable to MITM attacks than SSH; there's a big CA infrastructure including commercial CA's that check real-world credentials, so you can be reasonably sure the host you're connecting to is what it says it is; there are also plenty of hardware SSL authentication devices (e.g. smart cards containing X509 cert/key pairs) so you don't have to worry about your keys getting accidentally copied, etc. etc.
Maybe there's a good reason that SSH usage is increasing rather than decreasing, but I haven't figured it out. Any thoughts?
Oooh! I really like this one. Clever, humorous, and on top of all that, quite convenient to use.
sigs are a waste of space
Come on. SSH is a standard protocol. What if Tim Lee decided that he invented HTML(which he did) and everyone needs to call their shit something else?
You'd say. You wonderfull and everything, but you just crapped on yourself.
I tried PuTTY out, it is quite cool .. I like the minimal setup thing too, no install program it just runs. Great. :)
--
Delphis
He asked, "How many HTTP clients do you know that have "HTTP" in their name?" You responded by giving him the name of a server. A server is not a client.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Actually, there's one significant difference, and it's heavily in OpenSSH's favor. Unisys has a patent on LZW compression. Patents are legally binding at the discretion of the holder and may be prosecuted at will (or not) until they expire.
Tatu has a trademark on the name SSH. Trademarks only remain valid so long as they are agressively protected. 3Com has a really funny page about this topic. Since Tatu has implicitly allowed numerous outside groups to use the SSH name, he's probably lost his claim to it already.
"He asked, "How many HTTP clients do you know that have "HTTP" in their name?" You responded by giving him the name of a server. "
:-)
I was perfectly aware of that. I was not responding to him like a query, but to provoke some thought. How many pure http-clients exists anyways?
"A server is not a client."
Tell that to the XFree86-gang. They have polluted my mind. *grins*
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Or "Do you think my ASS is too big?"
"From my cold, dead hands you damn, dirty apes!" - CH
Although I don't think that the OpenSSH team needs to change the name, my suggestion would be to use the name "OpenSuSHi" ... :)
"Life is like a dogsled... if you're not the lead dog, the scenery never changes."
I see your point then.
:)
Re: XFree86 - they're just screwed up anyway
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
If you looked in to it, SSH was up like every other in the IT-field.
AC is AC
Is it me,did this just happen this week? I thought only Microsoft would do something like this?
I haven't seen anyone with this one:
;)
OSS - Open Secure Shell (plus various other cool meanings in the past
Lac
Vidi Vici Veni
Thanks for the sig
That's not recursive. Try something like
ONS = ONS's not SSH
:wq
Except that OpenSSH supports both Protocols 1 and 2 and protocol 1 can be turned off and only older clients are still using version 1 by default. I think for a period of time you will need ssh1 around until those older version are phased out. I think he's just pissed he released it (v1) under an open license and then thought better of it and released a new product under a very different license and just wants people to move to the new non-free version.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
I think he deserves credit for trying to bring civility to the process.
--Tom
I'll just setup a system wide alias to ssh anyway.
Can they claim infringement on an alias?
God i hope not.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
1. Is there a likelihood of confusion between SSH and OpenSSH? I'd say "yes" because they are similar products and the trademark "SSH" is contained in the name "OpenSSH". So not much of a chance for defending OpenSSH on the grounds of "no likelihood of confusion".
2. Was Tatu the first to use the name "SSH" for a secure shell? If not, then there might be grounds for having his trademark cancelled on grounds of "application in bad faith". This is possibly in Germany, for example, for 10 years after the trademark has been applied for.
3. Having not defended his trademark for four years, Tatu will have trouble getting others to drop the name "SSH" or combinations thereof. HOWEVER, this protects only existing uses of the name "SSH", not other individuals or companies using the name for future products. Also, while he have not have a case against the OpenSSH people, he might thereby have a case against companies like Red Hat or Suse distributing OpenSSH as part of their distributions, and definitely against companies that will be bringing out new Linux distributions in the future. If you have trademark case, you can go after everybody in the food chain. This can get messy.
4. Tatu says he has registrations for "Secure Shell" pending. If someone feels that this name should be free, please contact a lawyer and have him send a nice letter to the respective trademark offices opposing the registration. NOW it is relatively easy to oppose the registration, LATER ON this will be much more difficult.
5. Do any of the OpenSSH developers have sufficient funds to fight this through? This could be getting mighty expensive soon.
This all said, I think the e-mail this guy sent has been very polite and not the typical lawyer-attack letter. Either he's just polite and interested in finding a solution, or he knows he's on shaky grounds.
I put this together just to show you what's possible. If Tatu is in his right to use his trademark, then work out a solution. If there are legitimate reasons for keeping the name "SSH" free, then go ahead and defend against it!
As always, IANAL, but I won a trademark lawsuit before.
-Martin
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
Plus it has a nice ring, almost like "sex" and "sh" put together.
SSH Transport Layer Protocol (53476 bytes)
SSH Authentication Protocol (26537 bytes)
SSH Protocol Architecture (27345 bytes)
All of these documents are published on the IETF website. All of these documents cite Mr. Ylonen as an author. And all of these documents describe the SSH protocol. Not the "secsh" protocol - they consistantly refer to the discussed protocol as "SSH."
It's clear that "SSH" is the common name for the protocol that OpenSSH uses. Furthermore, by putting his name on a standards document that doesn't refer to the protocol by another name, surely he's endorsing this common use of "SSH"? And surely by publishing an open standard that in itself makes no claim to the name (I don't see the documents referring to the "SSH (R)" protocol), he should be relinquishing all exclusive rights to the name as a means of describing the protocol?
I don't see how OpenSSH could be construed to be deceptive in any way. It's derived from the original SSH in accordance with it's license, and interoperates with other computers using the SSH protocol. To turn around now and claim it's trademark violation which deceives the consumer, is analogous to Microsoft saying that "Word Viewer" is a trademark violation. Actually, it's closer to the Regents of the University of California accusing FreeBSD of trademark violation.
At best, it doesn't make sense. At worse, it's a deliberate and deceitful attempt to stab the people that are using the protocol (whose name he gave his blessing!) in the back.
rsh isn't a shell either. there was no "style of
naming" since rsh was the only odd man out. why
continue down a bad path?
Yoghurt
If OpenSSH is really in wide enough usage "to destroy everything [T. Ylönen has] built on it during the last several years", then I don't see how see how "SSH" and "Secure Shell" aren't in wide enough usage to void his trademark... That would be like me suggesting that Ylönen's violation of libgmp's license back when it was GPLed (it is now LGPLed) has seriously harmed the free software community... =)
It's more likely that a) OpenSSH would still be in as wide usage if it had originally called itself something else, b) OpenSSH will still be in as wide usage tomorrow, after (I predict) the name changes, and c) this isn't going to stop any BSD or Linux flavour that packages OpenSSH to not create an ssh symlink. =)
What I really don't understand: the complaint about OpenSSH encouraging SSH 1 usage. OpenSSH has supported the SSH2 protocol since June of last year. Sure, it also supports SSH 1. But even SSH will fall back into (absolutely insecure) rsh mode. And it's not like the more restrictive later SSH licensing is helping 1.2.27 dry up any more quickly...
I never said we should. Personally, I think the protocol should get the short, easy name, ssh (like FTP or HTTP) and the implementations should build on those (e.g. OpenSSH, TrademarkedSSH, SSHisCool, etc)
...the typical slashdot crowd start shouting "so what", "tough", "can't trademark this that or the other".
This bloke has had the courtesy to write a mild mannered letter _asking_ for the OpenSSH group to find another name, but no, he goes ignored and the typical rants show up here.
Yet, had he done what most other companies would have done, i.e: Cease and decist & get ISP to remove site, you lot would have got your usual hard on, about how dare a company affront an "Open" software group as such.
You lot need to fucking sort your act out.
Anonymous Coward
This letter is the nicest cease and desist I've read. Probably because it wasn't written by lawyers who usually say something like "stop doing this right now and we'll probably sue you anyway. Deliver us your first born child or I'll generate 80 billable hours this week to bring the wrath of our perverted court system down upon your ass."
This letter contained every nicety but "Wishing you and yours well in the coming New Year(tm)".
You can't trademark a number. This is why Intel named the processor Pentium. They discovered in court that Cyrix can call their chip 386's, and 486's without problems.
Of course, I feel that RMS ought to use the term "liberated software" to avoid the whole "free beer/free speech" issue, but that's another story....
... it forces people to think about what freedom and free really mean, and allows an easy and natural avenue for pointing it out to those less aware.
That is not such a good idea.
"Liberated" is slang in many areas for "procured by illicit means" (e.g. he "liberated" a pack of cigarretts from the local five and dime). To many "liberated software" has an unsavory implication of "warez."
The Free Speach/Free Beer discussion is IMHO a good one
ObSSH: if the SSH trademark should be enforceable (which I doubt, given that "ssh" is the name of an IETF standard, the original license allowed derivative products to use the term "ssh" as long is such products adhered to the RFCs, and OpenSSH has been using it for over a year now) I think your suggestion (Fresh) would be an excellent choice.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"I've got to go shit into the webserver to fix some shit."
"Here, let me shit onto your desktop and try some shit out."
*sn
ro da poi ratcu zo'u da pensi zmado do
About your IBM thing... go ahead and try selling computers as IBM and say that it stands for Internal Bus Maachines or something... you wouldn't even find a company to manufacture something with IBM on it because of the fact that it is trademarked, and you would be sued in a matter of seconds. This guy built a brand on the term SSH... and openSSH DOES confuse some people (don't bother with the "If I know it everyone does and if they don't know they aren't worthy to use a computer!!!" please) and he does have the legal right to defend his trademark. Just cause you make something free to compete with a named product, doesn't mean you can name it virtually the same thing. If it WAS legal, think of the havoc MS could cause.
SNS - SNS's Not SSH
So I suppose next Microsoft will patent the name "windows", "window", and "win". After all I don't know about you guys but when instructions call to open a new window it always confuses me with Microsoft Windows 9X. *grin*
I personally think that SSH was a bad name for a product anyways, of course if you name your product what it is instead of something else there will be confusion. ie nameing your toaster, "Toaster" etc. OpenSSH is a "Secure Shell" what else do you want to call it then? "Mickeys Proctecto Interface"? What a load of symantic legistical crap. IMHO
The secret to all life's problems envolves a law suit.
"furor over SSH1 security holes"? What does that have to do with OpenSSH?
Don't blame the nazis, they had no choice in the matter.
Strawman.
For a start the nazis were individual people who could each make their own decisions, whereas a corporate entity is obliged to act in the best interests of its shareholders.
Secondly, I think persuing a trademark infringemnt is somewhat different from butchering innocents. You may as well say that the RIAA or the MPAA are as bad as the Nazis.
RSSH: Really Secure SHell.
...
The inventor of RSH(tm) is going to sue them over this one
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Well then, Mr. Secure Shell, what should we call it? Trademark law essentially prohibits trademarking nouns (and, in fact, you can lose the trademark if it's commonly used as a noun). Thus you have Tylenol-brand pain reliever, Rollerblade-brand inline skates, and so on. If there's no common noun to describe your product other than its trade name, then you don't get to keep the trademark. A quick search will turn up lots of tidbits like this:
In the letter, he repeatedly uses both SSH and Secure Shell as nouns. He called it a "secure remote login product" a couple of times, but that's inadequately descriptive. "Tylenol-brand pain reliever" is OK; "Aspirin-brand pills" is not.It seems to me this guy wants to erase, or at least obscure, the excellent free replacement that's made his product irrelevant.
Going forward, and in the interests of bringing closure to this pressing issue, I'd suggest Mr. Ylonen piss up a Rope(TM)-brand rope.
cheers,
mike
Might have to drop the 'NT" based one or Microsoft might come looking for you as well. ;)
-- M
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Great name.
I'd also like to comment about the other postings in this thread. There seems to be about 90% of the 2+ posters talking about how he didn't defend his trademark initially, so screw him. OpenSSH should stay. May I ask these posters what the reaction would've been had he done so initially? Exactly. Same negative reaction.
There are also a few who have noted that this isn't a letter from lawyers. It is written by a person who understands and even has contributed to the very open source community he is appealing to. I suggest that these facts are taken into consideration.
My observations are these:
1) This guy isn't a lawyer.
2) This guy helped create openSSH.
3) This guy didn't care about the use of the name OpenSSH until his customers started getting confused.
4) Free projects change their name fairly regularly without losing a users.
5) He wrote a reasonable and non-lawyer request to a group asking not for them to cease and desist design and implementation of their program, but for a name change.
It seems like a reasonable thing to do to change the name.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
There's a live claim on an SSH logo . This one is valid. It prevents others from using the logo. It doesn't prevent others from using the word "SSH".
There are a few other SSHs of no significance to this issue. His claim that OpenSSH infringes on his trademark is BS.
Is this why Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola both happily co-exist?
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
"I have started receiving a significant amount of e-mail where people are confusing OpenSSH as either my product or my company's product, or are confusing or misrepresenting the meaning of the SSH and Secure Shell trademarks. I have also been informed of several recent press articles and outright advertisements that are further confusing the origin and meaning of the trademark."
As you can see here he's loosing business to a group who have implemented the ssh2 protocol, with a much better nicer and less restrictive license than theirs.
As others have said, if you don't protect your trademark then you loose the ability to enforce it. He's published the protocol under the name of ssh. Now that word just also happens to be the word that they patented. My question is if the word is now used to label something that is implemented in public domain and is avaiable from a standards comittee such as IETF, how the hell can you still use it in a trademark?
"we have offered certain licenses to use the SSH mark to refer to the protocol and to indicate that a product complies with the standard."
It seems to me that his company has allowed the use of the name and if I'm not mistaken, the OpenSSH group got their name from the protocol and not from the originating company. It was not explicitly stated that the name of the protocol couldn't be used in the name itself. If this is the case, then they should be allowed to keep their name as it stands.
It's have to say that none of those would work. Reason being that they all use the words "Secure Shell" and "SSH", which was trademarked by the company, so you would be back at square one. I say let's call it OpenShell. Unless of course thats already taken
> The OpenSSH 'product'?
Excuse me, did OpenSSH spring fully-formed from a random configuration of bits? Of course not. Ppl worked on it, made it, distributed it. Therefore it's a product, as in "something produced". The fact that it's free is neither here nor there; nor is the fact that bcos you haven't paid for it, you don't consider it a "product". As an example, you haven't paid for songs downloaded from Napster, but these songs are still the product of the music industry.
And why is there a requirement to know how the thing works? All the newbie user needs to know is that SSH improves security. Are you claiming that you don't deserve a secure system until you're reached a certain level of experience?!
Grab.
You cant copyright three letters. Like somebody would own "AT Computers" and AT is their brandname.
I on the other hand am going to sell sleasy burgers called FreeFat.
OpenSSH is not Open SSH. SSH stands for secure shell, okay he made it and used the name but please... Technically OpenBSD isnt using their name.
My thoughts, feel free to disagree but my thoughts still...
-- Merlin - www.scrolls.org/merlin merlin@bofh.is --
As far as I know the IETF doesn't like people publishing RFCs for technology that is patented, but they don't seem to have a similar policy for RFCs for protocalls that have a trademark infringing name, and no useful open use of the mark. Or do they and it was violated with SSH?
SMTP is the protocall, sendmail is the program and trademark. DNS is the protocall, bind is the program, and if there is a service mark it is bind, not DNS.
Why should SSH1/SSH2 be accepted as an open standard if nothing can be named that (or the very similar OpenSSH)?
I do think there are acceptable uses of a trademark on protocall names. If the trademark were used to make sure nothing was called "RADIUS" unless it implmented all the MUST parts of the RFC, none of the MUST NOT, and provided a argment on why SHOULD/SHOULD NOT wasn't followed, then I'm all for it. In that case the mark is actually protecting the word. For SSH the mark is being used after the fact to un-level the playing field.
I've read those comments. But to me it seems the developers of OpenSSH probably were aware that he had a trademark for SSH or one pending. (All the (R)'s they throw around) so it seems to me that he has the moral highground. I honestly don't know either how long one can have a trademark without upholding it. But I believe he wouldn't be upholding the trademark anymore if it wasn't valid. (His lawyers probably could probably have told him the length of time involved) But in case it turns out that the trademark was no longer valid, then I must agree he has no _legal_ recourse available.
A secure shell (note the absence of capitals) is just that. It is a description and could be equated to Boeing trademarking "jet fighter". Ok, so OpenSSH has to change, but the commands shouldn't, neither should the description.
See my journal, I write things there
2) The OpenSSH team doesn't need your approval; you in effect gave them your approval when you licensed it as you did (see 1).
It's pretty clear from the whole text that this is not his gripe. He doesn't care that they are hacking the systema and he knows he gave them that right with the license. What he cares about is that it "is also a derivative of my original SSH Secure Shell product, and it still looks very much like my product". The paragraph you quited talks about how the cofusion is worse. This all related to the same thing. They are using the SSH trademark, and there are actualy damages in the confusion because customers continue to use the older code thinking it's an equivelent product.
In short, I doubt he would mind them continuing to use the old code base, as long as they change their name.
-no broken link
I'd guess that SSH Corp. has a problem on its hands if the version of ssh that they released to the open-source community with no strings attached to form the basis of OpenSSH compiles to a binary called "ssh", and if the source tarball itself is called "ssh".
When Netscape and Sun released major products in open source form, they took some time to change the program's name. Netscape released "Mozilla" to the community, not "Netscape Communicator". Sun released "OpenOffice", not "StarOffice'. The trademark holders retained their "product" and opened up the source to an identical thing with a different name.
That the IETF RFCs authored by Mr. Ylonen specifiy protocols called "ssh" doesn't help his company's belated case.
At least he's trying to be civil about it.
Whether or not they can isn't the point. What he is saying is that continuing to support SSH1 is a Bad Idea. Kinda like saying continuing to drive a Ford Explorer with Firestone tires is a Bad Idea.
Can he stop them? No.
Do they have every right to continue supporting it? Yes.
Is it a good idea to continue supporting it? I don't think so.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
I think sins is (are) a much cooler choice anyway. =)
Except this term is descriptive -- ssh is an acronym for "secure shell", clearly derived from the traditional "remote shell". While it's possible to trademark descriptive terms, they tend to be much much weaker, and do *not* protect against other descriptive use of the term.
--
Get FRESH!
He tried to be discreet, and he says he got no exposure, so he posted to all the developers.
I can relate sort of. A few years ago I developed a digital lock product using Dallas iButtons It was intended for residential customers to unlock their houses at the touch of a button. I searched the net extensively trying to see if my preferred name (DigiLock) was used elsewhere. I came up empty. I didn't trademark it myself because we were a small company and I just did want the trademark hassle.
Well, about a year later, I start getting emails and calls from people asking if I sold a DigiLock that would secure a gym locker or cabinet. At first I thought they were confused. Well, eventually, I got someone inquiring to tell me more and eventually found a company that sold locks you could mount on cabinet and locker doors that also used iButtons. They called it the DigiLock and TM was all over the website. Sure enough - a check of the trademark website (which wasn't nearly as useful when I first developed my product) turned up that that company had a trademark for that name and they got it like 6 months before our product was released.
Our products were too close and I honestly didn't want to deal with all the folks inquiring about a product I didn't sell. So I changed the name to something I knew wasn't trademarked. Simple enough and my customers accepted the change easily when we publicized it.
Bottom line is - he's dead on about the added aggrevation dealing with confused customers because of a name.
I vote for secsh.
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
This could be a "friendly" request... But, then, why include the apparent SSH1 security FUD?
Unfortunately, many platforms (yes, I'm talking about non-UNIX/Linux platforms) don't have clients readily available for SSH2, and if you take away support for SSH1, you can bet that people will go right back to using telnet. SSH1 is still infinitely better than non-encrypted communications.
Maybe abbreviated to eea? Or, how about trg?
The protocol is called SSH. Now it's obvious that people will want to name their applications after the protocols they implement. So: either Tatu should have named his app and his protocol differently, and trademarked the app name only; or he shouldn't have trademarked the name. If he'd trademarked the app name only, OpenSSH would have named itself after the protocol and there'd have been no problem.
Releasing a supposedly "open" protocol and then trademarking the name is an evil business practice, because it means that only Tatu is allowed to name his implementation in the obvious way. It's the trademark analogy of the GIF trick: releasing a supposedly "open" file format and then patenting the only known algorithm that can generate it.
In fact, this is exactly equivalent to the GIF trick, because he's waited until the OpenSSH name is well established before acting. If he'd had a polite word right when OpenSSH was starting out, they'd probably have released it under a different name initially and nobody would have a problem now. But by waiting until they're established and then complaining, he's trying to force the change of a name people are used to - which will do harm to OpenSSH.
If Tatu were genuinely concerned about brand recognition, he would have (a) arranged that the protocol name could be used without restriction, instead of deliberately making it the same as his brand name; and (b) he would have notified OpenSSH at a more appropriate time. Given that he's done neither of these, it seems to me that he's using this trademark as a weapon, not a legitimate form of protection.
(Disclaimer: this is a moral position, not a legal one. The law will probably not recognise arguments like this. If so, the law needs fixing.)
I find this interesting. By specifically saying when the terms "ssh" and "Secure Shell" can _not_ be used, it is in effect saying that use of these terms in a derivitive work is acceptable (in fact, what better way to show that OpenSSH is derived from SSH that including SSH in the name?).
Moreover, this version was released in November 1995, before either term was registered and before December 1995, when SSH Communicatins Corp. was founded.
I can see him politely asking OpenSSH to change the name, but I can't see that they would be required to do so.
OpenSRL (SecureRemoteShell)
OpenCS (CryptoShell)
OpenSRC (SecureRemoteConnection)
OpenSRSH (SecureRemoteSHell)
I have to say that I do like FRESH. Whether the trademark is valid or not. OpenSSH is an uncreative mouthful.
The standard is called SECSH, so maybe OpenSSH should be OpenSECSH. Pretty ugly name, I guess, but it's logical.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I hate problems that are caused by third parties.
You know, here one party is demanding a change in a second party because of the stupidity and/or carelessness in a third party that didn't bother to RTFM.
But oh well, what can ya do?
No judgement from me about the appropriateness of this email.
Hmm... This notice or something else has boosted ;-)
SSH Communications stock value quite well today.
It was in spinning dive in January.
http://www.hex.fi/eng/marketinfo/stock.html
ohhhhhhhhh I like this one... "so he gave me his file in the ASS" or "man check out that ASS" hmmmm ok scratch the first one and I"ll go with the second one : could lead to some interesting tech talk... "my ASS is better than your ASS"
.sig under construction
Well, that is akin to trademarking the name FTP and going after every FTP client for using your name. How many FTP clients do you know that don't have FTP in the name? Not many. Wouldn't you expect an SSH client to have SSH in the name?
SSH is a protocol, therefor it stands to reason that a product which sole purpose is using the protocol would want to use it in the name to indicate what it does.
Finkployd
I don't really care if this is enforcible or not. I think he and my own experience make a good case for the confusion of the two, and I don't think anyone here will claim that is in any way desirable.
Is it now so entrenched that changing the name to FRESH or something else would cause too much breakage?
Do you honestly think the first course of action this guy would take would be to send an e-mail to a semi-public mailing list? Of course not, as he said, he has contacted those who initiated openssh. Apparently, they have refused to change the name, so he's doing what he can to avoid getting lawyers involved. SSH is *his* trademark and he has a right to protect that trademark.
He must actively defend his trademark and he must send out notices and take legal action "quickly," but the definition of "quickly" can depend heavily on the circumstances. If someone started a national advertising campaign for openssh, he would need to react within a few months or weeks in order to not lose his copyright due to inaction. However, for a case where an infringement is lesser known and less publicly known, I'm sure judges generally allow for a longer period of time before action must be taken. If Tatu sent out notices to the main openssh developers shortly after he learned of openssh, then I think it is very safe to assume that he would win any copyright battle in court.
Jason
Open Security SHell: OSSH, gets rid of Secure the "copyright" infringement part.. JMHO unless that's taken too :/
.sig under construction
I'm not sure what you're asking...
The term 'cola' is not trademarked... so the 'cola' part has nothing to do with it.
Trademark only protects your 'mark' in a given 'trade' (hence the name).
I confused the two initially. The problem was not that I can't read, but that I wasn't aware that there were 2 implementations. I thought that maybe ssh had decided to call itself OpenSSH or something. I didn't think much of it. And there lies the problem. Now I know there are 2 it is a different matter. This is clearly a problem and I think the OpenSSH project would not lose by a name change and would be doing a common courtesy to the original author who, after all, is just asking nicely.
These views are not necessarily the views of the human race
First, a trademark is a trademark, and if the usage of another company's/organization's trademark is causing confusion and loss of revenue, the company/organization that owns the trademark should defend it and ask that the trademark not be used without prior arrangement. You would ask nothing less from Linus for misuse of the "Linux" trademark; we should not hold the SSH guys to any other standard.
Second, regarding "Mandrake". I don't recall there being any rule that only one use of the word "Mandrake" is allowed in the entire Linux industry. I have heard of the developer Mandrake and am familiar with his work, but I don't have any problem separating him from the Linux distribution Mandrake. I would guess that newbies who are just picking up the Mandrake distribution would not be familiar enough with the developer Mandrake to be confused (if they're new to Linux, how would they know who Mandrake is?).
By the way, I want all Erik's to stop using the name "Erik". I've been using and evangelizing Linux since 1991, and other than Eric Youngdale I can't think of ANY other Eri[ck]s in the industry that predate me. So, all Eri[ck]s, please stop using your names in public when there is a Linux context involved...
Heh...
You say "By your reasoning, any company with a trademark should be fascistic about enforcing their rights as soon and as often as possible. There can be no leniency or they will loose their trademark. That's not exactly a situation I want to come about (not that I have the least say in it, of course)."
Well.. that's *exactly* how trademark law DOES work. You enforce them, or you lose them. That's why you see so many stupid-sounding tradmark violation suits, because the lawyers are making sure they actively police their mark, because if they don't, they LOSE it, for good.
or nortel
For Canadian Shell [or Canuck Shell] :-)
[ReidNews]
For a start the nazis were individual people who could each make their own decisions, whereas a corporate entity is obliged to act in the best interests of its shareholders.
So "I was just following orders", while not accepted as a valid defence at the Nuremberg Trials, is somehow acceptable for members of modern corporations?
The end does not, and never will, justify the means.
(please don't mod too harshly, moderators, I won't do it again...:)
deus does not exist but if he does
Given this, do these SSH upstarts stand any chance at all?
...the claim so settle your ass down and read some comments.
I think one of the issues is the length of time that went by before he went after openssh for trademark infringement. Now his letter mentions that the SSH(tm) lawyers have already been in contact with Theo et all regarding this so for me or you to say *when* this all started would be pure speculation. If it was only recently then that means for over a year openssh was openly doing their thing without hearing a peep from our little finnish wunderkind.
- Toby
I think it would be a good thing if they changed their name in the long run. As it is, they are followers by design. It might even be obnoxious if the OpenSSH people decided to start implementing their own standards and moving away from SSH Comminuications. And perhaps this is the major concern of the latter company.
If they have their own name, and even call it a new protocol, they can bring it down whichever path is best.
Also, can we try to have reasonable discussions around here. I swear this site gets worse every time I arrive. And it's not the operators who cause this, it's the knee-jerk, immature crowd. When arguing in this medium, only words can make you 10 feet tall. So many people around here act 10 feet tall, yet their words are UTTERLY worthless!
Strict obedience to the law is the key to liberty.
From FreeBSD security list
There are two flaws in the SSH1 protocol as implemented by OpenSSH and ssh.
Bullshit. So me and a bunch of hardware hackers build a new machine, calling it an "OpenApple". We sell them out of our garage for close to a year, until finally they become so popular that most of the computer industry picks up on it, including Apple itself. Apple now files a complaint.
How could the original SSH guys possibly know how big a breadth OpenSSH would get in a year? It's just a bunch of hackers, after all. Not a definable company.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
If they called it 'OpenCocaCola' and it was rather popular and it was 2 years before Coke sued them... coke would probably lose it's trademark.
Money talks... I'm sure Coca-Cola can afford to buy a few judges.
deus does not exist but if he does
Personally, I think SSH has long become "common name", just as people call personal computer "a PC", even though there was real IBM PC, and some call general copying machine "a xerox" or general napkin "a cleenex", etc. Nobody really cares if this is Ylonen's product or not anymore, when they are saying "we are allowing access by SSH". This is just as they'd say "we are allowing access by FTP". That's the back side of popularity - the name becomes commodized...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Why the 'shell' part? SSH isn't a shell.
Bash is a shell. Tcsh is a shell. SSH is a program which makes a connection to another machine, authenticates, and causes a shell (like bash or tcsh) to be run on the remote machine.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I guess you missed this part:
Some of the OpenBSD/OpenSSH developers/sponsors have also received a formal legal notice about the infringement earlier.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Butthole Corporate Developers (BCD)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That we weren't talking about the trademark infringement of OpenTCP on a company selling a product TCP® that also uses the same underlying protocol.
In this case, however, I think "OpenSSH" ought to be renamed, although the underlying names of config files, etc. should remain static.
The request, if late, is both respectful and from a man who has contributed much to the community. The hardworking members of OpenSSH should decide on a new name.
BTW, I was thinking of establishing a project for a cleanroom implementation of exec() that I would call openexec()...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Read the law yourself. You don't fight for a trademark you lose it.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
httpd.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Here's a guy that's worked long and hard to make his little slice of the pie. He isn't taking, he's making. Yet most of these posts are along the lines of He's wrong, we are right, and we are not going to comply with a simple, civilly worded request to do the right thing.
That's wrong.
First, Tatu Ylonen has very little choice in this. If he wants to keep his own trademarks, he must defend that mark when confusion arises. If you adolescent punks would read what he wrote, you would see something rare these days: Politeness from an intellectual property owner. Can you see how this would be written if it was from AOL/Time/Warner? First, it would have been hand delivered by the FBI, two SWAT teams, and maybe a division of Rangers if they thought you might have something as deadly as a fingernail file.
There is no question as to where SSH came from. There is no question what the right thing to do is.
Another thing to put on your agenda: GROW UP.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
IIRC, a patent or trademark holds only if the owning entity enforces it. So, this isn't so much about what they want to gain. It is more about protecting what they worked hard to create. While it is an extreme example, I would shoot someone for entering my home and trying to steal my property. Wouldn't you work hard to protect your belongings? Besides, if they don't enforce their trademarks, then anyone may (legally) use them. Kleenex anyone?
Surely they can't stop sysadmins from making a sym-link to the new name. Ben
From what I can gather in these threads, Mr. SSH may not have much of a case to stand on. He's waited too long for the change. Similarly, OpenSSH would have to suffer problems from their name change and site registration change(s). However, I wouldn't berate him for what he has done in creating this SSH/secSH thing in the first place.
Rather, wouldn't it be more reasonable to put in a plug for mr. SSH in the home page of OpenSSH.org with a link to his site. It wouldn't have to be an endorsement - but it might be a reasonable solution.
If you ever tried to find squid-cache by typing in a URL of www.squid.org, you don't get there directly. But that site has a link up front to the www.squid-cache.org website. A nice solution IMHO.
This already exists. Check on Freshmeat
http://freshmeat.net/projects/fressh/
well, an extra s but whatever.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Uh, yeah, that's why he complained about the security problem in older forms of both products and how OpenSSH is prolonging their lives.
I'm sorry; I read his letter; he's not asking OpenSSH to stop development, quite the contrary; he's just asking that they change the name enough that his company isn't put to expense and ... what should I call it, faceloss? ... damage to reputation ... getting inquiries or support calls or misleading journalism because of the consequent confusion. He even asks very nicely. I have no grand philosophical problem with his request; if I had any standing with the OpenSSH project I'd say "let's change the name".
Wouldn't that make it "OpenASS"?
--
Did I sum it up correctly ?
No. "Bread" is a descriptive english word. You could no more get a trademark on "bread" as a baked wheat/yeast combination than you could for "Windows" as a trademark for a transparent section of a wall. You could get a trademark for "Bread" windows, or "Windows" bread, because neither of them is descriptive.
That's why we gave up on "Open Source" as a trademark. It's too descriptive.
"Secure Shell" is arguably descriptive, however SSH is not, and "SSH" is what is being claimed as a trademark.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I like ASS. (Hmm, Freudian slip?) GNASH, they way you've got it acronymed (GNASH's Not A Secure SHell), should be GNASSH, which will confuse Tatu yet again. Somebody on Linux Today suggested blowshell - nice parallel to blowfish, and a hint of how to instruct the lawyers...
SSH Communications Security Corp, let's expand it shall we?
Secure SHell Communications Security Corporation
This redundantly repeats itself over and over again repeatedly.
The only intelligent solution is to have SSHCSC change its name.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
"Many of you are (and the initiators of the OpenSSH group certainly should have been) well aware of the existence of the trademark. Some of the OpenBSD/OpenSSH developers/sponsors have also received a formal legal notice about the infringement earlier." And do you know how much money they have lost now that there whole product has been regineered! And put under a BSD style license. So that anyone can use! The least they could do would be to put it under the GPL so that it would turn off half of the users, and operating systems on the planet. You OpenSSH guys cost SSH 5 new ferrari's!! And now the SPA will have one less thing to check the servers at work for! The nerve of some people! Cheers, Thomas
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
So, how about OSTAKAS (Open Secure Telnet Also Known As SSH).
I've got an even better idea! How about OSTFKAS (Open Secure Telnet Formerly Known As SSH)? Or perhaps they should just name it after the symbol of the blowfish? ^_-
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Not only does he get to look like the good guy this way, he might even salvage his trademark rights, assuming that they have a chance of being beaten in court as it stands. "Yes, they are using my trademark, but they have my explicit permission to do so."
A bit of cooperation is better than a tonne of coercion and legal sabre-rattling any day.
AirSupply: go ahead, cut me off.
Because a) that's where the final SH in SSH comes from, and b) it was early and I couldn't come up with another 2 words that gave me S H
www.eFax.com are spammers
I can see his point, but if HTTP was a company name, they'd have the same problem. He should have chosen a better trade name, one that wasn't a command, regardless of who made it first.
As for the confusion, it's become part of the order of things. All he can do is ask for reasonable disclaimers and friendly links between sites.
Legally he needs to back his trademark or he will lose it, hence he simply needs to officially endorse the use in this case, outlining conditions, blah, blah... [insert lawyers here]
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
- It's clear that the SSH people are making timely attempts to protect their trademarks. If this was 2005 and SSH had never spoken before on the issue, then clearly they'd be risking losing the trademark due to a failure to defend it. It is not 2005, it's 2001, little over a year since the infringment started, and we're seeing the tail end of what appears to have been a longer attempt to enforce the trademark.
- It's clear also that the letter is a last resort. SSH say they have already contacted the project leaders, and the project leaders have failed to respond. Prevaricating on the project's part does not mean that SSH are the guilty party.
I'd also like to say that I think it's probably the most reasonable, polite, cease & desist letter I've ever seen posted. It patiently explains the issues, explains where harm is being done, and it proposes one thing the OpenSSH people can do to fix it, namely change the name of the project. To wit: That's all they're asking for!Much as I detest pointless IP disputes, this one seems reasonable. They present evidence that people are confusing SSH with OpenSSH, to SSH's detriment, and they're asking for a minor change to OpenSSH, namely a change to the project name. No renaming of tools like 'ssh' is mentioned or implied. They've not waited around for years to jump on something, making it clear that they've been trying to enforce the trademark against OpenSSH for a while.
I don't see what the problem is. Theo: Change it. Secure Telnet or something to that effect would be more descriptive anyway.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
LOL .. I get 'The System Is Busy' error on the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) page.
Heh.. slashdotting the USPTO.
--
Delphis
I am sick of people bashing trademarks and praising the open alternative. All this while even Slashdot is trademarked!
And for your information, I have found SSH2 from Tatu and friends to be superior to OpenSSH. Besides functionality, SSH2 is free and open source, that's all I need.
I have to give kudos to the SSH guy, at least he's not suing (yet), which he surely could be doing. He's doing about the most polite thing you possibly could do in his situation -- asking the OpenSSH development community at large to simply change the name of the project/product. What the hell is wrong with that? He has a requirement to do so if he's to protect his trademark rights.
Don't jump on somebody just because they've actually had an original idea and built a company around it. If you could ever be so inspired, maybe you'd be in his shoes, then you could understand. Untill then, keep slaving away and making money for your employeers instead of yourselves.
terradot, growing awareness
No, "R" means "registered." After a trademark has been in use for two or more years (with the "TM" mark), it can be registered with the patent and trademark office; until it's officially approved it's "trademark pending"--which indicates the process is underway.
Simply using another name isn't going to kill anyone. "FreSH is a free, open source implementation of the SSH2 protocol." Bam. (The hardest part for most people would be learning to type "fresh" after their fingers are trained to type "ssh"... although on second thought, you know everyone's going to just make a symbolic link to "fresh"--or whatever it's called--from "ssh" anyway.)
People in the open source movement are very good at standing on principle, or at least shouting on it, but there are times I think they should be a bit more willing to accept "be courteous" as a valid principle, too. "Technically we can do this, so screw you, corporate whore" may give you a warm fuzzy feeling, but it's an attitude which quashes useful communication.
This is an ideal PR moment for OpenSSH.
Here's what you do:
1. Get everyone to know tht the SSH folks are being pains in the ass.
2. Hold a naming contest for OpenSSH.
3. Splash the resulting name around as "the new name of network security"
Get everyone to stop using the term "SSH", since we don't want to confuse anyone into using legacy software. Get them to use the real deal!
He sent letters and legal notices in the past. They just ignored him. He obviously tried to settle this in a reasonable manner, but he did try and enforce his trademark. This guy has created a good product that people use. He just wants people to associate the product name with just his product, so his product can compete on it's merrits, not the merrits or lack problems that other people's products have. That's the purpose of trademarks.
Seriously, what about ESH 'Encrypted Shell' .. seems simple enough.
Keep the command the same though as 'ssh' as it'll just cause problems otherwise.
--
Delphis
--- ORIGINAL
:)
Update: 02/14 02:44 PM by CT: I just wanted to insert my 2 bits into this story. This is a problem close to my heart: I hate getting tech support for PHPSlash. I don't care that it exists, in fact, I'm happy that it does, it fills a need and a lot of people like it.
---
I'm the maintainer of phpSlash. Sorry that you get support questions, if you care to please send them my way to nhruby@arches.uga.edu, direct them to our list: phpslash-users@lists.sourceforge.net ot to the website at http://www.phpslash.org.
As for you resoning about trademarks, you are being a bit idealistic
-n
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
But he says he's tried to ask the guys leading OpenSSH and they've just ignored him. If they won't pay him attention, what choice has he got? They're bloody lucky he's had the courtesy to post on a forum first, instead of just sending in the lawyers.
Grab.
Of course, I feel that RMS ought to use the term "liberated software" to avoid the whole "free beer/free speech" issue, but that's another story....
</Off-topic>
But then, gdb would have been called liberated software debugger. Oops!
if its not gpl or lgpl its not free software
The OpenSSH can be called OpenTomato and have SSH support claims all over their product description of they want.
/. - "We're sorry, the letters S, H and E are registered trademarks. Please pick another."
Sure. And when they refer to the protocol OpenTomato supports, what will they say then? Includes SS...er... whoops! That's trademarked.
Trademarking "open standards" is intellectual property theft of a more devious sort. It's like donating stuff to Goodwill and then stealing it back at night, after you've claimed credit for being a good guy.
And claiming trademarks for three letters just seems to lead down to the inevitable path often humored on
*scoove*
Why call it *shell in the first place, it's not a shell! Secure remote login or whatever would be better nomatter how extremely boring it sounds.
;)
/oh and why not SSH: Ssh isn't a SHell
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
From what I can tell, Tatu is pissed off because
As proof, I'll direct your attention to the "OpenSSH is causing us damage" bit in his e-mail.
At least this can get rid of the openssh.org vs. openssh.com complaint...
And I just thought of another reason: while *SSH isn't itself a shell, it gives you access to a shell.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Yeah, we could prolly just screw him and tell him that we're going to use OpenSSH as the name from now on - but really!
This is the guy that wrote the original product that OpenSSH is built on! And rather than revere him, and afford him the respect that this esteemed position deserves, we make him out to be a money-grubbing, selfish demon, because of the inconvenience of typing "fresh" instead of "ssh".
Come on. This guy has helped us all.
Change the name to something else and step out of his way.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How many times during the Bush/Gore election contention did we wish for one of them to be gracious and just conceed? I think Tatu's contrubution to the Internet is great. Monumental enough that the Internet wouldn't be the same without it. That having been said, how many of us would describe Theo de Raadt as gracious? I guess the moral is that not everything has to be a fight to the death. Tatu is not doing anything here that takes away my freedom to choose free software. This is an interesting point too. I would be impressed if OpenSSH just changed their name; but they might have a case if they don't want to. When did Tatu first contact them about changing their name? Has he contacted FreSSH? How rigorous has he been defending his trademark? If Tatu wants to keep a positive public image and still press this he should produce the history of his ignored request to the OpenSSH team.
Doug Alcorn
In a market point of view while I wouldn't blame the author for restricting the use of SSH, I would clearly note that the term "Secure Shell" is less of being considered as a trademark. Sorry Mr. Ylonen but morally you are incorrect on the whole. You also once took the term "Shell" and "SH" from somewhere right? Let us note that these things are "Remote Shell" and "RSH", a UNIX system for remote use. So your restriction is, in a moral point of view quite incorrect.OpenSSH people is doing the same you did some years ago. And don't tell me these things are different. Look back at those times before you started building the Corp.
But let's forget this point and restrict to the money one. SSH Corp., (TM) as we see, is loosing money. So, we may understand they wish to avoid confusions with those who are, _potentially_, hitting their pockets. So it may be understandable that SSH wants to restrict its name. But there is a problem here. Also, in economical terms, SSH didn't do a bunch to secure its own name during all these years. So now "SSH" AND "Secure Shell" are terms of use. Much like "telnet", "ftp", "http". The only to blame here is Mr. Ylonen himself. Well we may give out SSH back to the owner if he wishes to. However the term "Secure Shell", a composition of two common words and being a technical derivate of "Remote Shell" conceptions is harder to give out. Meanwhile it is an established technical concept. Restricting such term for private use is a serious demonstration of being very unfriendly to a huge community of users and developers.
Mr. Ylonen is not only securing a trademark but also creating hassles in hows and whens of the use of a technical concept. By trademarking this concept he is forcing people to create other namings and conventions. This will break a continuity of the use of these namings and conventions on technical docs, manuals and products. Whishes he this or not, he is doing more damage then use. Frankly, this may be the real killer of the SSH mark as people may choose other namings and conventions to avoid such selfish consideration of his own value.
rsh isn't a shell either. there was no "style of naming" since rsh was the only odd man out.
It doesn't matter whether it's a "shell" or not. In fact, it does follow the naming pattern of several other commands, collectively known as the "r commands" -- rlogin, rexec, rcp and rsh.
So now we have ssh (secure remote sh) and scp (secure remote cp).
Yes, it sounds like New Years Eve:
"Honey... (hic)... lets have secsh!"
...thump...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
SINS - SINS Is Not SSH :-)
SMERSH - Secure Multipoint Encryption Remote SHell (or something...)
Gerv
Misdesign of the USPTO database means I can't follow your link; everyone will have to do their own search. Oh well, that they're idiots we knew.
However, it looks as if the one relevant live trademark, held by "SSH Communications Security", is I think meant to cover the name as well as the logo: thus the opening line "Word Mark: SSH" and the "Mark Drawing Code: (5) WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS IN STYLIZED FORM".
--
Xenu loves you!
FYI - I did the same search (not using your link - don't work. Says the session as expired if you click on them) and DID return 3 matches on the word ssh. one of wich is dead, one of which is live (and owned by ssh inc - or whatever it's called) and another one is in a unrelated business.
ln -s
ln -s
Thank you, come again.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
In fact, this is exactly equivalent to the GIF trick
Not necessarily. There's a difference between trademarks and patents. Open*** can comply by simply changing its name to FreSH (free shell). (The same thing happened when The Tetris Company tried to sue Tetris cloners; the cloners simply changed the name of their products.) GIF writer developers have to completely abandon GIF, as LZW compression (a necessary and irreplaceable part of the GIF87 and GIF89 standard) is patented.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Isn't it obvious what they can gain? (Hint: it starts with "m" and ends with "oney")
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
There is no copyright infringement in this issue. It's a trademark that is being infringed.
The OpenSSH teams needs to take a lesson from Mesa. OpenGL is a trademark of SGI. Just change the name of OpenSSH, and you never have to worry about these stupid trademark infringements again.
*shrugs*
Whether it's registered or not, it's clearly been promoted by the holder as a general term, and the "trademark violation" has been knowingly tolerated for a year or so without action. He doesn't have a leg to stand on.
But the one that kills me is "trademark pending" on Secure Shell.
How utterly pathetic.
Have I mentioned my pending trademarks on "Word Processor", "Web Browser", and "Operating System"? I'll be busy sending out letters like his for a while myself.
---
See the message original message below:
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:29:00 +0000
From: Charles M. Hannum
To: cryptography@c2.net
Subject: Bad PRNGs revisted in FreSSH
The newly announced FreSSH, when there is no
uses a `fallback' to seed its PRNG that consists of:
[Fucking code snipped coz Slashdot filter no longer accepts C source code because it detects 'junk characters' - WTF!?!?!]
I don't think I need to tell people on this list why that's absolutely
horrible; I'm just pointing out that code is still released today with
crap like this. I would have thought we'd learned this lesson years
ago with the AFS, krb4, Netscape, et al vulnerabilities.
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
And plus, he states that he has been asking for some time now.
PuTTy.. It rocks. Free, GPL, SSH1 and SSH2. Great product
--
Free Mac Mini
My one objection to this is the obvious: isn't it a little late to start complaining? He doesn't mention when he first got around to asking the developers about this, but OpenSSH has been around for a while.
That said, if the developers are willing I wouldn't have any great problem with a name change. Perhaps "ossh"? *shrug*
You shoudn't be posting.
You are emotionally unstable.
Your right, that got my attention too. I didn't look at it favourably either.. but when you come down to it Ylönen created SSH which n+1 people use every day, me included. If he owns the trademark and tries to get other people to respect that in a friendly manner I just can't see how people can still flame that he's greedy or lashing out because his stock price has gone down.
osh
When spoken, it's even phonetically shorter than ssh.
Don't blame him, he has no real choice in this matter. Trademarks have to be protected, no matter how little you care, or else they will become invalid and anyone can use them. If he doesn't go after OpenSSH, tomorrow it'll be Microsoft using the name.
Blame instead the entire trademark system which has perpetuated this kind of attitude. It's gone from a system meant to protect rights to one that encourages, even demands, companies to trample all over their rivals.
if exception
then not rule
else rule
The exception here is phrased as "if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file". If this is the case, then derived work must be called by a name other then ssh or Secure Shell.
From this, a rule might be inferred, that is, if the derived work is compatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, then the derived work can indeed be called "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Hmm. This etymological post is slightly off-topic.
-Tez
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
Oh, come on! This is /., where every IP topic ends up bashing patents! Join the fun!
ERSH == encrypted remote shell
:)
ESH == encrypted shell
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
As always, IANAL --
Trademarks must be defended against infringments or you risk losing them. Further, they must be defended as quickly as possible against infringement. You're not allowed to let someone use it for a couple of years then suddenly decide to go after them when they become successful.
By looking at the whois record for openssh.com, it's obvious that Openssh has been using the name Openssh publicly since at least October of 1999. That's well over a year. I would hardly call this a timely filing.
The trademark process takes a while - and he even claims that the trademark for Secure Shell is still pending. It could be that he just recently received his trademark registration and how has the legal grounds to enforce it. THat means he didn't 'wait a whole year' to enforce it - it just took that long to get the process completed.
--
Twivel
most of your name suggestions would still be equally problematic, as his complaint revolved around the use of the SSH name in the product title.
I also don't think most people would really want an open implementation of SSH to be called "ASS".
Realistically, regardless of how all the opensource wonks on here act, he has a fully legitimate claim to the name and has been much more forthright with his request than many other companies would have been.
Besides, I'm sure someone could come up with a name that is cooler anyhow. who thought up the name for blowfish? where are they in this discussion?
and with regards to SSHv1, there are many devices that have SSHv1 implemented in hardware without support for SSHv2. I'll take a SSHv1 connection to a router over a telnet session any day, how about you?
EOM
So why not bite the bullet and call it Secure EXchange (sex)? ;-)
(Yes, I know, there's already a text editor called sex ("Simple Editor for X"). It's still a fun name.)
Advertise it as opensecsh or Sec Shell. (instead of secure shell).
--
Twivel
He better be remember what Apple did when Carl "butthead astronomer" Sagan complained about them using his name.
Tylenol-brand pain reliever" is OK; "Aspirin-brand pills" is not.
Except in some jurisdictions, Bayer still has a trademark on ASPIRIN® brand acetylsalicylic acid pain reliever. See also this Flash map of jurisdictions.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In an incredible display of coordination and maturity, the decentralized Open Source community, honoring the contributions of Tatu Ylonen, opted to rename their secure shell implementation from "OpenSSH" to "Fresh" thereby respecting his (albeit dubious) trademark, and subsequently avoided incidentally cutting off his customer base using his own name. Despite the fact that the author of SSH failed to enforce his trademark in an appropriate timeframe, the organizers, developers, and users of OpenSSH forgave him the oversight and simply renamed the package, symbolically linked "ssh" to "fresh," and went on their merry way. Thus is the power of *nix. Thus is the power of Open Source. Thus is the power of Open Source development.
Maybe.
The OpenSSH 'product'? I don't think of OpenSSH as a product, a product is something 'consumers' 'buy' or 'sell', not a freely distributed tool. I realize that not everyone is going to be a security guru right off the bat, but until you actually are able to distinguish SSH from OpenSSH, then I'm not sure why it matters as you clearly haven't passed the minimum intelligence test to use either. Is SSH1 broken? Yes, but (BUT!) . . . SSH2 isn't available for a lot of things that SSH1 IS available for - and SSH1 is a hell of a lot better than 'telnet '
--Ryvar
(for the record I use ONLY linux on all my computers, and support open source)
Well face it, not all things can be free. He registered SSH trade mark, made bussiness of it and what is the problem ? It is his property. Taking it is not fair, even if it is for free source. Imagine someone say "OK, Coca COla is good, let's take their formula and spread it around so everyone can make coke". Problem would be if he wants to patent crypto alghorytm for example. But with name it is ok
OpenSSH team - require a command-line argument to activate "commercial ssh compatibility mode." Place this argument in both the client and the server. Do not enable it by default.
OpenSSH has a much greater market penetration than commercial ssh, and it is our community that controls him, not the other way around. He will require a demonstration.
p.s. I suggest a new name of "esh" or "ensh" for Encrypted Network SHell...
In the case of the Dixon's guy, he opened an electrical goods shop opposite his local branch of Dixons. They sued him and lost and then he changed the name of the shop because it was "attracting the wrong sort of customer".
McDonalds is on even looser ground since no one called McDonald has been involved in running the company for decades.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
One infringe on a copywrite if you don't profit from it?
You can make it more difficult to make the trademark/copyright owner to infringe on it, as in this case.
ummm, I wouldn't think that the commands would have to change, would they? Sun's NIS was originally called Yellow Pages (yp) and because of a trademark issue with (I believe) British Telecom, it had to change the name of the product, but none of the commands changed (ypcat, ypmatch, etc.). Are commands really trademarkable. I gotta put in my trademark on 'ls' today! :)
Just my 2 cents. I think that if they want OpenSSH to go as far as to change the command names, then OpenSSH should just ignore them and let them explain to a court why they waited until NOW to decide that they don't like 'ssh' (a protocol that HE chose to: first, open source; second, submit to IETF as an open standard.
Thoreau
Indeed. I use TeraTerm with the SSH addon for a Windows SSH client, by which I administrate a number of Linux machines running - you guessed it - OpenSSH! (no, it wasn't a confused choice, just an informed one)
.. I've personally found TeraTerm + SSH to be very effective and easy to use.
What other Windows SSH clients to people use?
--
Delphis
He's asking us politely to change the name, as the confusion is cutting into his bottom line of his business, the business he's trying to use to put food on the table and his kids through college (or whatever it is they have over in Finland).
Data Fellows helped us secure our networks for a couple of years (which is a long time in our industry), before openSSH came along. I think that deserves some accolades, and deserves him more than a little consideration of his request. And, it really was a request more than a demand.
So, I personally think it should be given consideration, regardless of how much of a pain it'll be. I think he deserves at least that much.
The whois record suggests he waited a little over a year (November 4, 1999). That's not very long.
Strict obedience to the law is the key to liberty.
4. Tatu says he has registrations for "Secure Shell" pending.
:(
If this passes through the US (USPTO?) I would be very disappointed. Registering 'Secure Shell' is about as logical as 'Fast Harddrive' or 'Soft Towel' or 'Comfortable Chair'. It is obviously simple description..
How long do you think until his registration is approved?
Oh come on dude. Want us to rename RSH as well? Perhaps people are confusing rsh and ssh.. give it up. Great program and all, but you should take the opportunity you get when someone comes to your site, with openssh problems, as a possible sales lead. Most companies would love the opportunity to get "strays" into their company
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
Encryption gives a sense of security. I know that if I was logged into a shell securely, (regardless of how broken it was) I would be much more likely to type in sensitive information than if I was using plaintext. If someone is listening to passing data with the intention of stealing valuable information, they will have the proper tools if they are serious about it.
---
Desperation is a stinky cologne
One infringe on a copywrite if you don't profit from it?
You can make it more difficult to make the trademark/copyright owner to profit from it, as in this case.
(Ignore previous nonsensical message, 'twas a thinko.)
There's no guarantee that I can navigate the USPTO website, but where in this trademark record is it abandoned? I used TESS, the basic search, and entered SSH. Am I missing something here?
Word Mark SSH
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer programs and software for preventing unauthorized access to computer networks and for providing secured connections to computer networks
IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: telecommunication services, namely, providing secured telecommunications connections to a global computer network
IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: maintenance and support services for computer programs and software
Mark Drawing Code (5) WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS IN STYLIZED FORM
Serial Number 75150525
Filing Date August 15, 1996
Filed ITU FILED AS ITU
Published for Opposition December 16, 1997
Registration Number 2141991
Registration Date March 10, 1998
Owner (REGISTRANT) SSH Communications Security Oy JOINT STOCK COMPANY FINLAND Tekniikantie 12 02150 Espoo FINLAND
Attorney of Record MICHAEL B LASKY
Section 44 Indicator SECT44
Priority Date March 1, 1996
Type of Mark TRADEMARK. SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
When a bunch of people came out with "Kha0S Linux", I got lots of contact from people on IRC and elsewhere... I just took it in stride, and made sure that everyone knew that I wasn't the writer of it.
Oh, except for a few people. I pretended I wrote it and told them that I had special anti-lamer code that would destroy their hard drive if they tried to install it.
Snicker.
On a new name for OpenSSH. Something that will not confuse the average guy on what is what product.
1) Secure Login (SL)
2) Secure Telnet (ST)
3) Secure Remote Shell (SRSH)
Help me with more I am to tired to think right now
I tried to run commercial SSH because it was the first SSH I found. It didn't work well. With any network delays it would log me out and it ran kind of unstable. The settings were a bit touchy also and I seem to recall that it wasn't easy to install on RHL6.1.
Then I tried OpenSSH. It worked like a charm, I get the source and the right to change it, nobody is going to try to make me pay a license fee for support I don't need, and it's rock solid.
Maybe Commercial SSH should try selling commercial support for OpenSSH instead of their own broken implementation. Too bad that the top notch quality and simple setup of OpenSSH will no tempt many to buy support.
Since SSH is a necessity of existence like air and water, it should just install and run instantly like telnet does on most unicies. OpenSSH is a community effort that can make it a reality. Commercial SSH seems to have a different set of goals that don't include ease of use.
-Brian
You're missing the point...
The problem is not that openSSH resembles the original SSH, it has to in order to do what it does. But when it looks like SSH, acts like SSH, and the name is similar besides, it definitely can cause confusion.
IIRC, debian installs openSSH (since it falls under it's definition of "free"), but the package itself is called ssh. A user may think they are getting the true "ssh," when they are actually getting openSSH. This is a definite example of trademark confusion.
What wouldn't be bad is if someone released a first person shooter like quake, calling it openSSH. No confusion could arise, the fps "openSSH" and the secure shell "SSH" would be completely different products.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
> Whether or not they can isn't the point. What he
> is saying is that continuing to support SSH1 is
> a Bad Idea. Kinda like saying continuing to
> drive a Ford Explorer with Firestone tires is a
> Bad Idea.
>
> Can he stop them? No.
> Do they have every right to continue supporting
> it? Yes.
> Is it a good idea to continue supporting it? I
> don't think so.
I don't think he's saying that they don't have a right to continue supporting the SSH1 protocol, but rather, it goes to support his point that trademark usage confusion exists. If he's decided that it's a bad idea, and has discontinued it's support in the commercial/trademark protected version, and is using that as a differentiating factor, then confusion is created by a similar product continuing to do so.
YMMV,
I mean, if they've ignored him all along, that's different.
Though I'd still maintain that it's news to most of us that 'ssh' is a registered trademark (tm), given the open protocol specs by the same name, and the plethora of tools that use the ssh name.
I think everyone will agree that "ssh" is a protocol, not a trademark. If anything, it is based on the term "rsh", so would Berkely now be able to do what Tatu is suggesting the community does now, to change the name of a competing product?
:)
I'm glad Tatu developed it, but ssh had problems from the start with commercial licences. Heck, I
actually TRIED to get get a comercial licence but the entire DataFellows thing was a huge disaster. I gave up on trying to buy it. Now that's not OpenSSH's mistake.
Next, here comes the US with their "open source crypto is allowed", and RedHat starts deploring it massively with their 7.0 distribution. It's a worldwide success, and now Tatu has a real problem. Most people know the difference between ssh and openssh, but if 1% doesn't, Tatu gets a lot of non-customers and that is annoying.
And as a sidenote, Tatu know claims that OpenSSH is causing problems for keeping sshv1 intact. While his reasoning might be very valid, the practise is that we all went through hell with the various v1-only and v2-only servers and clients. Tell an entire campus to buy new software from DataFellows because their new clients dont support v1, and all old clients won't support v2. OpenSSH was a blessing to get things to work for everyone.
Sorry, all this warfare is just the result of Tatu (rightfully!) trying to make a living the wrong way, by selling licences instead of using a more modern opensource model to sell support contracts and become the free world (non-US) leading crypto company.
Ofcourse, I wonder now what Alex de Joode will do
with openssh.org, he already had a fight with the openbsd people
Paul
Sorry for requiring you to change your product name from OpenBread to something that doesn't confuse with my high quality Bread products trademark. Everybody is welcome to use the open available recipe for for their products, but just don't call them Bread. I had a lot of work making my company well known as a Bread Baker.
Did I sum it up correctly ?
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
TSFKASSH :)
> the attacks on ssh1 are of a difficulty roughly
> on par with stealing a TCP connection from a
> modern OS: the attack is possible, but extremely
> impractical.
This comment demands clarification.
"Blind spoofing" (when the attacker cannot sniff packets being sent between the target machines) against a modern operating system is indeed very difficult because it requires guessing of sequence numbers.
However, if the attacker can observe the traffic (e.g., they're sniffing the ethernet of one of the machines participating in the connection), then it is easy to hijack the connection.
ssh is not a shell. no one puts in their
/etc/passwd shell field. it runs no scripts.
calling it a shell has always struck me as misleading. maybe this trademark issue will prompt a more accurate name.
Yoghurt
No, I suggest "SSHsucks," with the subsequent registration of sshsucks.org.
It dosent really matter to me all I know is that VAX is synonymous for sucking.
that the suit wasn't over the term 'x86' but over the '386, 80386, 486, 80486' etc individually...
Intel clamied they were 'trademarks', and that by making compatable chips and calling them '486' etc... they were infringing.
The court ruled that you can't trademark a number, a part number even.
That's why the 80586 was called the Pentium, and all advertising shifted to saying 'Pentium' instead of '586', because the word Pentium *Could* be trademarked.
OpenSHHHH... Sorry, we can't mention the name of the "other" product.
OpenSHL... Hey, what's a single letter between friends?
Open S S H... Oh, Come on, quit whining. You registered "SSH" and NOT "S S H", so there!
OpenWhat?... How do you pronounce "SSH" anyway?
Open-You-Know-What... Just add a ".org" and, presto! We are back in business...
WeAreSecureAndWeAreCanadian... Yep, it's getting longer and longer.
OpenSourceSecureShell... There, feeling better already? Shush, it's all going to go away.
Ho and by the way, I want to get sued too!! I am going to register:
openssh.co.uk
openssh.org.uk
openssh.fr
openssh.asso.fr
openssh.ch
openssh.it
(...etc...)
Anybody cares to bankroll me ?? =)
Bonus question: How on earth can you copyright a three letters acronym? I'll try copyrighting "IBM".
At least, it's going to make the fight more interesting and potentially more lucrative. Hmmmm. US$50,000,000 out-of-court settlement. Please note that this is just the "Acronym", not the logo, which is copyrighted by our big, blue friends in Armonk.
And remember people: OpenBSD needs your help! Order your 2.8 CD today and makes the world a better place for security and a worse place for script kiddies and copyright hoarders...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I could be wrong about the RSA connection here, but doesn't it seem wrong to run so contrary to their demonstrated attitude? I mean, SSH is founded on their pub/priv key encryption system, and when the time to jettison their patent into the public space came, what did they do? Politely did so early. I mean, if this is the example set by a big, evil corporation - what the hell is Tatu saying about himself with these actions? --Ryvar
I vote for shush.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
So just change the name to "Sasha" (in the same manner as "Samba.") As a command, it's annoying to be two letters longer, but that's what alias is for.
Just to point a few things out...
I would thus like to ask you to change the name OpenSSH to something else that doesn't infringe the SSH or Secure Shell trademarks, basically to something that is clearly different and doesn't cause confusion.
OK, I can go along with this. He has the trademark, the two applications are very similar, I can see where he's coming from.
The confusion is made even worse by the fact that OpenSSH is also a derivative of my original SSH Secure Shell product, and it still looks
very much like my product (without my approval for any of it, by the way). The old SSH1 protocol and implementation are known to have fundamental security problems, some of which have been described in recent CERT vulnerability notices and various conference papers.
OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols.
Now this is a completely different kettle of fish.
1) If you didn't want people to hack on the code, why did you initially release it under a license that allowed that? It can't be retroactively retracted, y'know...
2) The OpenSSH team doesn't need your approval; you in effect gave them your approval when you licensed it as you did (see 1).
3) Yes, SSH1 has security problems. WHo developed it? You did. Also, IIRC, OpenSSH was just about the only implementation that wasn't vulnerable to several of the vulnerabilities that have been found so far.
4) OpenSSH supports SSH2 anyway, so I don't see how its existence is encouraging the use of SSH1. More than likely, people who had been put off by your version of SSH2's restrictive licensing terms moved to SSH2 only when OpenSSH provided it.
All in all, it seems a mix of a legitimate claim with some very clumsy revisionism and FUD.
If someone wants to go by a nickname or alphanumeric representation of an english word then go for it but how in the world can a project named "Scoop" be mistaken for a person nick-named "Scoop"? It all seems rather childish to me.
Harlem, here I come!
Bill
taken from: http://www.eskimo.com/~matth/hobby.html
From "Historically Brewed" magazine:
And now it's time for the "ARE SOME THINGS BETTER LEFT UNSAID?" Department
The following is a reprint of a letter which Bill Gates, co-founder of
Microsoft, wrote and had published in the Homebrew Computer Club
newsletter on February 3, 1976.
Ouch Bill, take it easy guy!
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack
of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software
and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will
quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to
expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the
initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the
last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have
4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we
have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are
using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent,
however. 1) most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of
all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we
have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC
worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you
steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something
to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at
MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling
software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead
make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good
software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for
nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all
bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one
besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written
6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very
little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most
directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on
hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in
the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be
kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a
suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114,
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108. Nothing would please me more than being
able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good
software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
HSS - Host Secure Session
Since it's definitely more than just a shell now.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
NAVASSHOSSH: Not As Vulnerable As SSH Open Secure SHell
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Talk about knee jerk reactions, they try to protect thier IP, lets put them out of business. SSH is a great product, but I can understand the confusion, what if I created a shell and called it OpenBASH, you don't think Bash would get requests for help on my shell?
So, the real question is, what name should OpenSSH use?
Trusted shell (tsh)
encrypted shell (esh)
Anyone else has others
Get involved
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
It's a shame if the inventor of such a useful thing is losing money but it is his own fault for picing a generic term for the company name. Or should the inventor of the term "Shell" sue Ylonen?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716 ,121640,00.html
_Deirdre
If it was a garage operation they didn't know about, that would be different. How could they enforce it if they didn't know about it? You're right there.
That is not the case here. OpenSSH is highly visible, and they even admit they KNEW about it a long time ago. It doesn't matter how big or small they are; if they are infringing, you must do something about it.
> Having not defended his trademark for four
> years, Tatu will have trouble getting others to
> drop the name "SSH" or combinations thereof.
Yep...
> HOWEVER, this protects only existing uses of the
> name "SSH", not other individuals or
> companies using the name for future products.
I believe this is not the case under US trademark law. Other people have cited the case of "aspirin": Bayer failed to protect the trademark and so now it is in the public domain. New products can be called "aspirin".
Normally I'd be on the side of the person who owns the trademark except there are a few things about this that I do not like.
First off, getting SSH as the name of an IETF protocol, and then trademarking it. This is the act that really stinks. Its as bad as Apple's Firewire stunt, getting an IEEE protocol set up and trademarking the name associated with it. This reeks of trademark trapping, or trying to grant oneself a monopoly with regards to an IETF protocol, or at least an unfair advantage. Only his software can use the name of the protocol in the name of the software using the protocol. It would be like trademarking HTTP.
Second off, I am somewhat suspicious at the time lag involved between the founding of OpenSSH and the present. If you're going to do the trademark enforcement thing, do it at the very beginning and go with the lawyers and accept the PR meltdown that is going to result because you did a sleazy thing like trademark an IETF protocol in the first place.
In short, this is someone who is trying to have it both ways. Playing the IETF and open standards game while still having the trademark and the exclusive right to make software with the name of that protocol in it. He tried to engineer himself an unfair marketing advantage and some reasonable uses of the SSH protocol name are causing him business confusion. You will notice there is no talk of his changing his software name and setting up a new trademark. And while you can talk about his investment in the mindshare of the SSH name, he did it in a fashion that puts other people trying to use the SSH protocol at an unfair disadvantage.
Now, perhaps I am being unfair here, perhaps he did not intend to do things that way, at least not consciously. But the end result is the same. He took an open protocol name and trademarked it so that no one else could use the protocol name in software that implements the software protocol but him, giving him an unfair advantage. Now that people are trying to erode that unfair advantage, he is crying foul, and after other people have invested work in the OpenSSH brand name as well.
Oh yes, and tradmarking "Secure Shell" strikes me about on the level of trying to trademark "Windows". You might be able to do it but its a really sleazy thing to try. Whatever sympathy I have for him was completely destroyed when that fact came to surface. This is a person using trademarks in an abusive fashion and I'd like to see that reap the rewards it deserves.
And I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery!
It's funny that this actually is a moral issue, and not one about power. The sides are balanced. On one side, The State. the other, the forces of Indifference. Who are you going to sue? and what would you get, besides bad publicity? The author seems to realize this, and is asking nicely. So what is the right thing to do? It may be clear-cut to you, but just because it violates some laws, and causes enormous tech support bills doesn't make it right to change the name. The best reason I can come up with to change the name is: It is the polite thing to do. The man asked nicely, and the name doesn't matter particularly to me. As long as it works.
Isn't OpenSSH, along with OpenBSD, developed in Canada? Well, the above letter only metions trademarks in the US and Europe, so doesn't make this all moot?
sigs are a waste of space
If the U.S. trademark process is similar to the German one (== just as bad), the registration will be examined by a USPTO officer, and if he doesn't find obvious reasons for declining, the trademark will be accepted and published. Then, there will be an opposition period for a couple of months in which it is rather easy to shoot down a trademark.
After that, the trademark is validly registered, and it becomes tough (== lawsuits) to have the trademark cancelled.
Please note that trademarks might not be registered in the U.S. alone. Other countries will have different procedures.
-Martin
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
I also asked a couple of clients. They said the same thing. Sounds to me like this is another case of failing to protect a trademark and losing it to the public domain.
- Milo Hyson
Seems like SSH team feels that OpenSSH is eating their profits, since SSH has no added value but is not free. So they are trying to hurt OpenSSH project in the hope that this will bring their profits back. I guess it won't.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
"I/my company is loosing money because there is a free alternative to my product that most people are using now instead of my product. So now I'm gonig to whine and cry and enforce a trademark I've never enforced before to try to recoup some cost."
I think that about covers it, don't you?
-- DuckWing
"The old SSH1 protocol and implementation are known to have fundamental security problems, some of which have been described in recent CERT vulnerability notices and various conference papers. OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols."
I've always used ssh1, I don't know why, I guess because the first time I started using it, a friend said to me: "Use ssh1, ssh2 sucks". So I did. What are the main differences between ssh1 and ssh2 and why is ssh1 fundamentally broken and ssh2 not?
Also, last time I looked, OpenSSH can use both protocol 1 and 2.
<grub> Reading
--Ryvar
Putty is a great program for those of us stuck on Windows at work. It's easy to download (it's only one exe file!) and really small. Just do a google search for "putty" and 30 seconds later, you're in business.
In general, it's also a great vt100 client, better than most I've used.
Shine Is Note Essessaitch
Of course, for the sake of grammar, the daemon will need to be called "shone".
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
It seems to me that this is a too little too late scenario. OpenSSH has been around for a long time and he hasn't taken issue with it until now. Now, it could be argues that OpenSSH has had time to build it's own name associated with a certain quality of product, etc. If they were forced to change their name, it might cause confusion for people who wanted to find their product.
Has he made his complaints earlier, OpenSSH would have been named something else, and today we'd all be using an SSH replacement called something else. Sucks to have to go to court over such things, but I think the OpenSSH group has a strong case at this point.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Sorry, James, trademarks must be defended or they will be lost. And there is substantial value to USERS to know that a name has a meaning fixed by law. It is that value they wish to protect for their USERS. Or don't you care about users?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Speaking of which, if you write a program that create a FRESH connection, be careful what you name it because Mentos already has a trademark on "FRESHmaker". =P
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
how about OpenSECSH and the command 'secsh'?
Well, just for the record, TTSSH didn't have any of these bugs either.
OK, so Bayer's not a good example, but what I said is still true :-).
just for the record, all SSH1 implementations except for OpenSSH 2.3.0 had the flaw. This includes the commercial SSH. But shame on me for responding to a troll.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
It seems to me that since the protocol is called ssh in the RFC:
http://www.free.lp.se/fish/rfc.txt, which seems to predate his application for a trademark, he doesn't have a a valid claim.
In this RFC, the name of the protocol is ssh. It would be a violation of the RFC to call it anything else, and it would lead to confusion.
I don't think the drafters of trademark law ever thought someone would give something away over a long enough period of time to be a problem. Good to see that the outdatedness of these laws cuts both ways.
If this is so, then I don't think it really matters much for the OpenSSH side; AFAIK OpenSSH isn't really marketed, so the cost of changing its name is negligible. But if the trademark covers the actual ssh command, then the trademark is doing real damage to the community.
Scoop is Pat Lenz, the creator of freshmeat.net. Fool. ;)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
...an opportunity to get rid of that nondescript name and call it by a name that's more suggestive of what it does. I'm sure I'm not the only person to be saturated with initials to such an extent that sometimes I can't even remember what I'm talking about.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
the OpenSSH people should change their name to Fatmantis.
::I will not moderate my opinions for your stinking karma
He doesn't have to be the first to use the name, as long as nobody else is using it at the time in connection with similar products.
He chose to monopolize a number (a small number, in fact: 0x535348). He chose to use that against the OpenSSH project. Don't tell me has no choice.
The trademark system is designed to protect the consumer, not the trademark owner. OpenSSH is not defrauding anyone. It may be costing Tatu business, but that's tough on him.
Furthermore, it's not clear to me what he has actually trademarked. If you look at ssh.com, you'll see "SSH (R) Secure Shell tm." "(R)" means, I wish I had any rights to reserve. "Secure shell" is descriptive, and therefore not subject to trademark.
This is the license that OpenSSH is based on:
Sure looks like 'permission' to me.
He hinted at another reason for all this:
"OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole inernet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols."
Also - Isn't the actual protocol, as recognized by the IETF, named "SSH" - if so, how can you trademark that?
I have scripts & users that depend on ssh being ssh and scp being scp on many of my systems. If i rename 'sosh' (or whatever) back to 'ssh', will i be fined for trademark infringement? If i do change the executable name, then users will continue to confuse the products. If i don't, then every script that references ssh will have to be changed.
Additionally, how does this affect the FreSSH Project and other ssh implementations which include ssh in their names? Have they too be served notices?
-f
-f
www.blackant.net
Except, that the copyright doesn't protect the use of the name IN another name. Let me give you an example. In my home state, there were a couple of water parks, Magic Waters, and Rageing Waters. Both had Trademarked names. Rageing Waters came first, but had no right to tell Magic Waters to change their name because the use of Waters might make it difficult for people to differentiate them. OpenSSH is A DIFFERENT NAME entirely than SSH IMHO. If SSH's clientelle can't tell the difference, then they are IDIOTS.
The part of this letter that really pissed me off was this:
The confusion is made even worse by the fact that OpenSSH is also a derivative of my original SSH Secure Shell product, and it still looks very much like my product (without my approval for any of it, by the way).
Correct me if I am wrong, but telnet used that Look and Feel LONG before SSH ever came into the picture. So getting this jokers "approval" was not an issue. Further, this was completely off the topic of the letter. It should never have been brought up. If his beef was to get the OpenSSH guys to change their L&F, then he should have SAID that.
I realize this guy is only trying to protect his own interests. But, there are hundreds of products out there that the names only differ by one word. Example: Windows, and the Open Windows projects. I don't see M$ flipping out over that one. Another example is the ACS and Open ACS tools. The problem here is that SSH is not a significantly BETTER product than OpenSSH. Instead of throwing a fit over the name, perhaps SSH should make an attempt to DIFFERENTIATE their product significantly from OpenSSH. Requesting that OpenSSH change their name seems like a rediculous request to me. It says what it is, an OPEN implementation of the SSH standard.
It is time for companies to stop stomping on the little guys and INNOVATE instead. Instead of jumping on the litigous bandwagon, make your product BETTER than the competition. When I decide to buy or use a software solution, who has the better lawyers shouldn't even be a factor in my decision. But it is fast becomming one.
IANAL... But I play one on
Hemos says 'Enfringement', ComanderTaco says 'Infringement'. I'm afraid I'll have to agree with the latter in this case (Dictionary.com).
attention karmawarrior: that was very well put.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
I think this guy makes a lot of good points. SSH was created by these people and another organization has taken their work and is giving it out for free.
How long has it been going on? They knew about it for years... many have used the SSH mark. It's probably fair to say that it has become a common name (dilution) and no longer has a sole brand-name value.
Trademark is not like patent; you MUST enforce it or lose it. THey should have been asked to stop using it a LONG time ago, not just recently. SSH hasn't protected their mark, so they lose it.
This is how I initially felt about it, and still do to an extent. He actually is upset that OpenSSH exists, and not just because of the name. He lets that slip into his message a couple of times. I also think he chose this method of informing people more because of the PR meltdown he knew would insue if he used a lawyer.
Overall, I think changing OpenSSH's name would be a good idea. The argument about SSH being the name of a protocol is well taken, and perhaps the name of the protocol also needs to be changed. If his program were an Open Source program, OpenSSH would be considered a fork, and would require a namechange. Of course, in the Open Source world, the distinction between SSH and OpenSSH would be enough.
FRESH has my vote, though, perhaps Liberated Encrypted SHell (LESH) would be better. It's shorter and uses the word 'liberated' instead of 'free'. It does have (un?)fortune associations with letch and lush though. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Are they only trying to protect their "brand" product SSH ?
Or is this a first step towards claiming the SSH protocol (a la M$) ?
1) He didn't enforce his trademark for the last year and a bit, so as far as the community is concerned 'ssh' is now a common word, not a 'product'. He didn't defend it right away, so he will lose it. That's how Trademark law works. (as opposd to Patent law, where you can selectively enforce it wherever you want, and ignore others)
2) If someone managed to get the recipe for Coca-Cola, they could use it to make another product and market it. The only reason they don't is it's a SECRET, and nobody knows what it is. What they can't do is call it 'coke' or 'coca cola' because that's coke's registered trademark. If they called it 'OpenCocaCola' and it was rather popular and it was 2 years before Coke sued them... coke would probably lose it's trademark.
This has nothing to do with patent.
Whahuh? So, just because it means something to you, its 'another major website'? I quite honestly don't have a clue what the fuck you're talking about. And from what you said, a _guy_ created a site, not a discussion engine far superior to Slash named Scoop.
-G, BOFH at www.tolkiengeeks.net
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Be in Your Senses
Godwin's Law alert!!!! Godwin's Law alert!!!!
$ grep smtp /etc/services
/etc/services
/etc/services
smtp 25/tcp mail
$ grep ssh
ssh 22/tcp
ssh 22/udp
$ grep sendmail
He obviously didn't protect the trademark rights if he let the name of his program be used as a generic term for the protocol. Compare that to sendmail
It doesn't matter, though. The new site is already registered
http://www.opensecsh.org
Just because we 'can', doesn't mean we 'should'. You're saying "He waited to long to do anything about it, so it's his loss" and "So what if it's causing his customer's business." What if you're right? What would it hurt to change the name in an effort to help the man out? He created the technology, and has gone through the efforts to protect it in a fair, polite manor. He hasn't sued anyone (and you don't know how long he's been e-mailing people trying to get them stop so just because you heard about it today doesn't mean he waited over a year to say something). He's clearly saying use the technology, I support that, just please change the name because you're confusing my customers, and you're clearly saying "screw you we'll do what we want because we can." Instead of complaining, how about thanking the man for being friendly and supportive of the OpenSSH project. I'm glad my real life community doesn't reflect the attitude I see daily in the "open source" community.
OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols.
You must be serious...there may have been flaws in the SSH1 protocol but OpenSSH does implement SSH2 protocol also. So what is the problem, SSH1 is just there for backwards compatability.
In reality OpenSSH have done a great service to the community. They have made secure access freely available to the masses. For example, most of the Linux distributions now ship OpenSSH where as they didn't use to ship SSH because of the unfavourable liscense. Furthermore, many of the systems that used to run on the orignal SSH have now moved to using OpenSSH. Basically, I don't think they understand the great service OpenSSH is providing. A great service that they could have provided from the start if they weren't so interested in hoarding everything for themselves.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Furthermore, there are other ssh implementations that have been using "ssh" in their name since at least 1997. The earliest one I am aware of is Ian Goldberg's "Top Gun SSH" for the palm pilot (upon which terraterm ssh was originally based).
Four years of not protecting a trademark is a long time. It also seems strange that none of the authors of programs with "ssh" in their name have been contacted. It certainly does not seem like Tatu has a strong case for the ssh trademark.
Doesn't use the SSH name at all, easy to remember, says it's secure ("Not a Secure Shell" != very confidence building), plus it has that fun GNU style. And you'll always know what to serve at release parties.
sulli
RTFJ.
Fine, trademark, fry me for the use of the wrong word. AFAIK, use of all or part of a trademarked name INSIDE of another name doesn't violate current trademark policy. SSH doensn't have a legal leg to stand on.
IANAL... But I play one on
Terrible, Rotten, Annoying SHell...
sulli
RTFJ.
While I agree that there might be some confusion, that's because BOTH are at fault for picking such a stupid name for a product.
Secure Shell is a description NOT a name. That's about as dumb as "Word Processor" Corporation or "Raspberry Ice Cream Cake" corporation.
Get your head out of your lawyer's ass adn pick a decent name for your company and your product. The Bozos who pick any Unix-ish perpetuated acronym and stick "Open" in front of it are as deserving of scorn as the original idiots who couldn't type the entire word in the first place.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I really agree on this!
Downloading mp3s and using DeCSS MIGHT be wrong, but I guess many of you here do it anyway because YOU think it is the right thing to do (I really dont want to start a discussion here, just pointing out that there are different views). I also believe many people would continue to use DeCSS even if it turned out to be completely illegal.
I think the slashdot community loses some credability when it makes this issue an excersise in law. We slashdotters like common sense, nice companies and free software. This Finish entrepreneur has contributed to open source - ssh is an important and good tool. It is obvious that he is one of the "good guys", and he is not trying to force any of us to pay him for using ssh or whatever clone we prefer.
Let us change the name of OpenSSH, and hopefully SSH will license their future product in a more generous way than otherwise.
The only dangerous thing I can think about is if this snowballs; what other projects can be in danger?
I think the posts that seem to say "screw him" or "just too bad, he had his chance" are a complete disgrace to the open source movement.
Just change the name to something else like ThanksForInventingItnowFuckOFFSH, or maybe just FreSH.
I see no justification for the strident tones and bully stances adopted by you fellow slashdotters.
Let the guy make his money, change the freakin name, and save the passion for the real corporate bastards. You guys are crapping all over your own kind.
Lovely way to attract people to the open sores movement.
M
IMHO, he states his position quite clearly, and has made this the most non-threatening Cease-and-Desist letter I have ever come across. His demands are simple: He has no problem with people implementing his protocols, or mimicking his design, in fact he encourages it. The only thing he has a problem with is the name, which I should think is readily fixable. Just name it Sasha or something.
It is very had to say noone else may use souch a short abbreviation like "SSH". Compare OpenSSH to OpenWindows. Can Microsoft sue for the use of "Windows" there ?
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Anyone can apply for trademark and get it. Whether it is enforcable is another thing altogether.
Does not the original license on the ssh code allow for use 'for any purpose?'
IT also states that if the software functions differently from the protocol specified in the rfc's (called ssh1 and ssh2), it should not be called ssh.
That's like saying that as long as it behaves according to the protocols, it can be called ssh.
The protocols are commonly know to the entire internet community as 'ssh'... good luck enforcing that trademark.
I suggest FRESH: Free Remote Encrypted SHell.
I make this name available without restriction.
<Off-topic>
Of course, I feel that RMS ought to use the term "liberated software" to avoid the whole "free beer/free speech" issue, but that's another story....
</Off-topic>
www.eFax.com are spammers
I, personally, wasn't even aware that there was a trademarked SSH brand company, and when I went to search for an ssh implementation to install, and found that Tatu Ylonen had registered a company with that name, I found it quite brazen to name his company after the protocol, as if someone had chosen to name their networking company TCP/IP (R).
I don't know the facts, and couldn't find them anywhere in this thread. Did Tatu Ylonen develop the ssh protocol? Did he coin the term "ssh" or "secure shell"?
If so, I feel he has the right to enforce his trademark, just as Linus Torvalds has the right to enforce the use of the term "Linux". And, although, I'd like it if he were as reasonable as Linus (i.e. with Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, etc.), it is his right to utilize trademark law for his own benefit.
That said, it is obvious that the letter posted to the openssh dev mailing list is belligerent and inflammatory; and that his intent is to "create" evidence to defend his trademark in court and to justify his actions (or intent). He is not only creating proof of defense of the trademark, but attempting to convince others (as well as himself) of the material value of "ssh" as a trademark that is not, at least in my mind, actually there, and to plant artificial statistics in the minds of "witnesses" that would otherwise be uncorraborated.
As evidence, I submit my suspicion that the figure of 180 employees is bullshit.
We opensource community is flexible, why not pick a better name when chance come?
How about 'SHIT'?
It can be 'SHell IT, or Shit HIT, whatever, it doesn't matter, I just found it work well with prefix 'OPEN'.
Even the name is registered trademark of something else, the registerer would be too busy dealing with overwhelming infringement cases. There were millions of such trademark misuses in Al's camp when Bush announced victory.
Even better, you can take the best of the situation when your boss consult you about system security, you can openly say:
"It needs shit."
"I don't get a shit of it."
"You really need shit."
"What shit do you get into?!"
"You want that shit?"
"Do you want shit with that"
"HOLY-I mean-OPENSHIT!!"
Except, that the copyright doesn't protect the use of the name IN another name. Let me give you an example. In my home state, there were a couple of water parks, Magic Waters, and Rageing Waters. Both had Trademarked names. Rageing Waters came first, but had no right to tell Magic Waters to change their name because the use of Waters might make it difficult for people to differentiate them. OpenSSH is A DIFFERENT NAME entirely than SSH IMHO. If SSH's clientelle can't tell the difference, then they are IDIOTS.
First of all, this has absolutly nothing to do with Copyrights. Secondly, "waters' is a regular word, ssh is not. I seriously doubt the other waterpark could have called itself "Magic Raging Watters" or whatever.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I can't help thinking that the whole trademark needs some sort of overhaul, or just an injection of common sense. For example, the way things are nowadays McDonalds will sue any place calling itself McDonalds ..., even if it's McDonalds Cafe (owned and run by the McDonald family for 6 generations). So I think any applications for trademarks based on a word or collections words used in the public domain should be disallowed.
Examples I could give include Windows (not ok - think Windows Icons Mouse Pointer), Windows 95/NT... (fair enough - haven't been used together in the public domain), one-click (not ok as it's reasonable to say that the term is in the public domain).
But I guess (like with software patents) common sense is a bit too much to ask for...
Look and feel as a legal argument is quite vague. Not to mention that he gave the original away, there is no reason it shouldn't resemble the original. That would be like id releasing the quake source code and then complaining about it after the fact when some other company like sierra puts out a similar game. (doom, unreal, quake, halflife, etc are all first person shooters, that's a pretty substantial look and feel, although it's not very enforceable)
Although SSH is a trademarked product name, it is also the name of an open protocol. Even Tatu himself uses the name "SSH1" to refer to a protocol version instead of some obscure "IETF SECSH" name, which most people have never heard about.
OpenSSH is a project and software name that clearly indicates that it is not the original product, but an (open and free) implementation of the SSH protocols; at most a derivative product. It is not confusing in any way.
The *SSH suffix probably does have some "advertising value" for OpenSSH, as it also clearly indicates what the software is about, and people can more easily pay attention to it. This may create some competition pressure for SSH Communications. Thus we can understand Tatu's reaction, but it doesn't give him justification to bash the "competitors" unfairly.
I believe that Tatu's decision for opening the original SSH program license and the protocol was a good decision, as it gave the product great publicity and established a wide base of users. The company might not even exist anymore without that decision. OpenSSH still continues to do that service, at least to some degree.
Perhaps the decision has later become a disadvantage that now "causes financial damage" for the company, as it has grown bigger and well-known, and can support itself without the publicity from the free version. So what? What moral (or legal) justification does that change of strategy give for bashing those who still benefit from the old strategy?
I don't know if Tatu has complained to OpenSSH about its name before, but he definitely should have done so as soon as possible, when OpenSSH project was started in 1999. It's hard to believe that he wouldn't have heard about it then. Denying the use of the name later can't be interpreted as much else but unfair bashing. Over a year is a long time in "Internet time".
SSH software has been a great gift for the Internet community, and OpenSSH might not exist without it. We should all be very thankful to Tatu for creating SSH (to a reasonable degree!). If OpenSSH people find it easy to change their name, and want to respect Tatu's wishes, just change it.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"
with apologies to The Usual Suspects!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
He's not being nice because he's a nice person, he's being nice because he doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Care to explain? From what I know of trademark law, he's got a pretty strong case there. He would almost certainly win if it went to court.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Wouldn't having the trade mark used as the name fo an IETF standard dilute the mark? Doesn't the fact that the protocol has become so popular and that there are multiple implementations of it prove and that the ssh protocol is possibly refered to more than the ssh product establish dilution?
This has nothing whatsoever to do with patents. Your post is ridiculous.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
OpenSSH should be called:
- OpenSSH
- SSH
- ASS
- ESH
- XXH
- FRESH
- OSTAKAS
- CowboyNeal
A Trademark for Secure SHell's acronym is not infringed upon by the acronym for OPEN Secure SHell.
To be completely honest, I think it's SSH Security that should change their name to something more unique, and re-release their product as {NEWCO}SSH to distinguish it from competitors. It was stupid to try and force uniqueness upon something that was common and obvious (ref: sh, bash, ksh, rsh, etc).
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Renaming it to assh and asshd, based on the arcfour (alleged RC4) debacle is an intelligent move. It could even become "OpenASSH". Good grief.
So, openSSH has the word SSH in it, OK, that might even be a trademark infringment, I'm not sure about it, but I'll bear with him for the time being.
The claim is product confusion. OK, interesting, but here's the problem, openSSH performs the same functions as SSH, right? The command line is inherently similar, right? There's no support problem, because if anyone calls SSH.com and says: My ssh isn't working, there's not really a confusion, it's the same protocol. (that's assuming that people would call them and say that) But in any case, The issue is mostly the fact that SSH is losing money. That really is a bad thing. The innovator of what is now a standard in the *nix community is going belly up.
Lets call a spade a spade. The underlying current here is: He's trying to change the way we do things, to make it more difficult to get free stuff that does the same thing as his expensive stuff. I agree, but there's no real harm in changing the name, as long as it goes on freshmeat, slashdot, and rootprompt. And then when SSH goes chapter 11, or whatnot, it won't be "the fault of the free software movement"
hmmmm?
It's no small wonder that companies and individuals alike don't behave politely in circumstances like this. Mr. Ylonen tried to accomodate the wide use of the SSH name, hoped that it wouldn't interfere with his own business, and when it finally proved to confuse users of his own product, asked nicely that people help him resolve the situation. And for the most part, what do we do? Turn him into a villain. You all need a few more holes drilled in your heads to get out the idiot vapors. You bitch and whine about the corporate lawyers and their complete and utter lack of common sense and common courtesy, but yet refuse to be responsible and mature when someone comes along and behaves EXACTLY like we've all hoped people would regarding copyright and trademark issues. Up until now, we could always blame the lack of cooperation and openness on the mark holders and their stupid demands. This time, it's your fault. Shame on you...
(With apologies to GNU :)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
look at /etc/services. do you see "sendmail"? No, you don't. What do you see? You see the name of the protocol, "smtp". Now look at what /etc/services has for port 22. It says "ssh". It does not say "ssh(TM)" or "OpenSSH" because it is using a generic name for a protocol. He never stopped [insert unix vendor] from using the term "ssh" in /etc/services, so he doesn't have a valid claim anymore
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
Slashdot has become quite accustomed to throwing their arms up in anger, and accusing others of not being good neighbors - but when the time comes for an open source project to be the good neighbor, what happens? We hear shouts of "well, they should have protected their trademark better." Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Most of the "infringment" stories that Slashdot has seen are of the inflammatory nature. Many of them are projects that have nothing to do with one another, but here we have a different case.
The OpenSSH group is being asked by the project from whom their original code derived, and which group came up with the protocol they're implementing, to change their name. This isn't some monster corporation looking to quash competition. This is a small company which is receiving legitimate confusion about their product due to the success of a free implementation.
And when they ask the free implementation to change their name - the open source community scoffs. IMO, the open source community isn't being a very good neighbor.
Really, what's lost with a name change? Do the executables need to be renamed, thus causing confusion for the user? NO A while ago, when Sun first came out with what is now known as NIS, it was called Yellow Pages (yp). I believe it was British Telecom who held the trademark for the "Yellow Pages" name, and Sun was forced to change the name of their product. Did it cause confusion for the user? Maybe some initially, while people got acclimated to the new name in documentation, etc -- but the utilities, today, over 10 years later, still bear their original names of yp*. An earlier post mentioned other free projects creating symbolic links to the more widely known executable names, such as vim and elvis..
But even further, why must a project's name match the name of their executable? Apache installs httpd, not apached. (Ignoring windows, here). Samba installs [ns]mbd, not sambad. OpenSSH itself, as it is NOW doesn't install "opensshd".
All in all, I think the Open Source community needs to be a good neighbor here. This is more than a case of name usage, this is a case of a coder developing one of the most widely used pieces of software on the 'net. For better or worse, he chose to take it and make money with it, changing his license in the process. Should this negate the fact that the earlier code was out there? That he put the effort in to coming up with the protocol as well? I certainly don't think so.
Really, it doesn't take much effort to change the name of newly released products, and I don't think they're asking to change the millions of installed copies. All that would really be required is a new chosen name, and the registration of an appropriate domain.
Who knows, by being good neighbors, SSH Communications might even foot the bill for it.
If not, email me. I will.
-Jeff
Tell an entire campus to buy new software from DataFellows because their new clients dont support v1, and all old clients won't support v2. OpenSSH was a blessing to get things to work for everyone.
You've got the company wrong. DataFellows is nowadays F-Secure, and F-Secure indeed sells SSH products. But Tatu's company is SSH Communications. I prefer SSH Communications' software.
Actually, I find this all rather interesting. I'm no newbie, but I thought that SSH was just the name of the protocol (like FTP or HTTP), and that OpenSSH was just one of the implementations (like WuFTP or Apache Web Server). I can understand his point completely because there is some confusion. (Maybe he should name his project something other than the name of the protocol to avoid real confusion? RealSSH perhaps?)
I just don't get it. How can so many people who are most probably highly educated (-> intelligent? I don't think so) get so hostile when a _LEGITIMATE_ trademark owner or one who surely will own it soon if not yet tries in a friendly way to get people not to infringe on his trademark. The trademark which he must defend in order to retain it. Oh well, idiots generally like a flamefest which does nothing creative. Idiocy never ceases to amaze me.
What if OpenSSH specifically placed a disclaimer in its code stating that OpenSSH was not part of SSH Communications Security? Have a little warning come up each time you run ssh stating it's exact origin. i.e.
Using OpenSSH (see www.openssh.com for support)
[me@slashdot.com]$
or something. This would help stop some of the confusion since the command for both is 'ssh'. If the OpenSHH version more clearly identified itself as such I don't think there would be a problem.
And finally the main problem I see with this is that SSH has become the defacto protocol name. Just like HTTP, FTP, etc. You don't see CuteFTP complaining that ncftp uses FTP in its name. I don't think SSHCS can either.
what would have worked better for him would have been to go after them right away (several years ago) and then "granted permission" AT THAT TIME to show action on protection of the mark. I think he is screwed.
Looking for other money sources with this current action?
Oh, bullshit. With all due respect, what does Theo have to offer in the way of money? I don't know Theo's pocketbook, but I'd be willing to guess he's not the gates of UNIX, let alone BSD!
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
But, but, but... then Phil would sue you!
one (1) phil-up to the first respondant who gets this.
Don't ask. Go see.
The OpenSSH folks should change the name. "Secure Shell" isn't descriptive anyway and that has always annoyed me. It's not a shell!
They should change the name to something remotely similar like SHCP (secure host connection protocol) or SC3 (secure computer-to-computer connection) and then the IETF (or whoever it is) should change the name of the PROTOCOL to match. In other words, completely discontinue use of SSH, including command names, etc.
It's not good to have the protocol name be a trademark.
If the original SSH becomes the odd man out, so to speak, it will quickly be forgotten and the free replacement will prevail.
cd /usr/local/bin
ln -s srsh ssh
Whatcha gonna do when dey come for you?
:wq
Serial Number Word Mark
1 75828436 MAKING THE INTERNET SECURE
2 75901280 SSH2
3 75900845 HYPERMODE
4 75901279 IPSEC EXPRESS
5 75900906 SECURE SHELL
6 75900905 IPSEC ON SILICON
7 75150525 SSH
These guys seem to be keen on regstering trade marks in the US. They even registered "secure shell". What the f...? I thought that it's impossible to register generic words as trade marks especially when they are used in the exact same context, e.g. imagine you are obliged to use the following in a manual: Application A is a secure shell ® application blah, blah...
And what the hell is "IPSEC ON SILICON"?
It's a pity - there are so many brilliant open source programmers from Finland....
A hungry bear does not dance!
I find it interesting that the descriptive paragraph that introduces this letter describes it as "demanding" the name change. Interesting what a word can do. Viz:
- actually reading the letter doesn't give the impression that the author is "demanding" the name change. He states he is "asking" twice. Yet the comments from slashdot readers are talking about "litigation," "demands," etc.
- The discussion of this letter on Linux Today, where there is no editorial introduction, just the text of the letter, is far more reasoned and moderate.
- Gee, he contacted the developers and they did not address the issue. Did he immediately sue? Nope. Is this a cease and desist order? Nope. Is this a demand . . . I hardly think so and I doubt that it deserves the characterizations it is receiving in some of these posts.
I think this points out what journalists know and some have yet to learn: the description of the content is as - or even more significant - than the content itself.
"When I grow up, I'll be stable."
Really Annoying SHell
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
in that he seems to have been 'lenient'. Unfortunately, in trademark law, you CAN'T be.
If you don't enforce your mark, you lose it. If you allow it to come into common use by others, and don't defend it at all, then you can't come back later when you think it's a threat and try to enforce it. It's not like Patents, that can be selectively enforced.
If he admits he originally left them alone, *even though they were in violation of his mark*, then he can't come back later and enforce it, period. It won't hold up in court.
FTP programs usually use the word ftp in the name. Yeah, some person could somehow, someway get confused between cuteftp and nftp, but calling it for what it is to identify it's primary purpose/protocol seems better than having wierd names that would make searching for alternative applications much more difficult. Making aliases for all the protocols is what I think will add confusion.
I think it should be called Es Es Aich.
Open-EsEsAich
But that's just me...
- Serge Wroclawski
Writers' Block.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
It's not the OpenSSH developers fault people confuse OpenSSH with another (if original) variety of SSH.
I think back to the recent interview with the creator of the Korn shell. It's his name, for crying out loud, and I didn't see or hear about him complaining that people actually used the letters "ksh".
Or is this just another case of a company not meeting expectations, so let's try to befuddle competition with legal threats, and maybe while they're busy changing the name, and all the documentation, and all the code, and dealing with the FUD about their implementation, we can gain some marketshare?
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
From the terms of Ylönen's 1995 copyright notice for ssh 1.2.12, on which OpenSSH is based: "As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this software can be used freely for any purpose. Any derived versions of this software must be clearly marked as such, and if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be called by a name other than 'ssh' or 'Secure Shell'."
Phillip
Whether or not OpenSSH is legally required to change their name given the prior permissions on earlier versions of SSH is a minor issue, since only the Linux/BSD distribution makers need to track the change and the updated software will continue to ship in all of the distributions.
What is of more concern to me is whether the shell command "ssh" will have to change, since that would actually make a lot shell scripts and other programs incompatble.
Next time your boss has you deploying a machine, put on your best Sean Connery accent, "I think the scherver needsch juscht a little SecSH!"
1. Using the word 'Open'(*C), which is CLEARLY a trademark of OpenBSD.....tsk tsk
2. 'SSH'(*R), three capital versions of the ROMAN alphabet, copyright circa 400 BC
3. And of course, we're ALL aware that 'shell'(*TM) is owned exclusively by the Turtle Wax corporation.
Oh, this just in: Berkely Software Distribution has announced thier petented ownership of the term 'socket'. I guess we'll all have to do client/server 'pluggie' programming now...
(NOTE: dripping sarcasm copyright Rune69, all rights reserved)
Is there a country where it's legal to kill the owners of ridiculously stupid patents? anyone?
When faced with a problem, many web developers say "I know, I'll use JavaScript!".
Now they have two problems.
He refers to ssh as a protocol, but in the same e-mail refers to ssh as a protected trademark. HTTP is a protocol, and companies/groups have come out with different protocols of HTTP on both the client and daemon ends, however, no one has ever claimed to own the http trademark or brand.
Either he needs to choose to name his company something else, lay off, or attempt the change the protocol's name (hah!).
Can you say: "Kleenex", "Trampoline", "Jello", "Escalator", "Nylon", "Thermos", "Band-Aid", (and the list goes on)?
When a term falls into common usage, and becomes part of the language, a Trade Mark can become unenforceable, not just from a practical standpoint, but legally as well.
Is it fair? Probably not. Does it happen? See list above.
(T)he (O)ld (M)an
Different SSH daemons:
0.3% Cisco-1.5
3.6% OpenSSH-1.5
13.7% OpenSSH-1.99
0.1% OpenSSH-2.0
1.8% Other-1.5
0.2% SSH-1.3
0.1% SSH-1.4
61.8% SSH-1.5
10.1% SSH-1.99
8.1% SSH-2.0
I count 80.3% of the daemons running versions of the "commercial" ssh, while 17.4% run OpenSSH. Just because you want it to be so doesn't make it so.
Incidentally, I vote to change the name. Either "Shush" or "Fresh" would be fine by me, though there already IS a FreSSH, so my vote is with Shush. No need to change the name to ANOTHER that is infringing or confusing.
Tim
OPEN_SSH?
Just kidding, but seriously--
Part of the problem is that as far as the lack of creativity goes, there's PLENTY to go around. It's a byproduct of the Unix functional-yet-minimalist mentality that gave us 'cat', 'mv' and 'ls'. As a result, Shell became sh, and Remote Shell-- rsh. It only follows that Secure Shell would become 'ssh'... it makes perfect sense in the true unixen tradition.
Dammit man! I like UNIX but I'm a programmer, not a marketteer.
Moreso than a product, ssh is more like a protocol for which there can obviously be many implementations... to that end, I would submit that the 'confusion' is possibly a good thing because the 'open' product advertises and lends credibility/support to the 'closed' one.
I think that if the author of ssh wants to preserve his company, he should offer to LICENSE 'ssh' in the same way that the modem manufacturer HAYES once licensed 'HAYES compatible' (of course with deference to the fact that openssh is a volunteer effort) so that his company can remain in the cat-bird seat at standards definition meetings. The alternative is that the openssh people rename their product to something different and then because they offer a free implementation, achieve acceptance, credibility, and an installed user base that forgets about its ties to the original product.
I do feel for his problem and appreciate that he was nice about expressing his concern, but I simply feel that there are better ways out of this situation. EXAMPLE:
In addition to ssh, sh, and rsh... most of you are aware that there is also 'ftp' and 'telnet'. Across platforms there have been many implementations including 'TCP/Connect' for the Macintosh. 'TCP/Connect' sounds more like a PRODUCT name. Many of us are also familiar with the Eudora e-mail client.
What I would propose to the author of ssh to get out of the confusion that plagues his company is that HE RENAME HIS PRODUCT to something only slightly more creative like:
SECURE Connector SECURELink
or CRYPTLink
or CRYPTConnect
or SECUREComm
or SAFELink
or SAFEConnect
or ANYTHING that sounds more like a commercial product and then BILL/Advertise that product as supporting whichever SSH level his company establishes.
My point is that being embraced by the computing community is a GOOD thing that can be put to GOOD (and even profitable) use. Once you have everyone dancing to your tune, you don't have to break the jukebox just to prove that you own it. As for the slash/phpslash thing, I think there are subtle differences between the confusions...OpenSSH started with Ylonen's source, the license said:
`This file is part of the ssh software, Copyright (c) 1995 Tatu Ylonen, Finland
COPYING POLICY AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES
As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this software can be used freely for any purpose. Any derived versions of this software must be clearly marked as such, and if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be called by a name other than "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
...'
He only asks that derivations be marked as such, and use of the name "ssh" is only dependent on compatibility with the RFC.
Can he now withdraw the permission he once gave?
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
As for the possibility that OpenSSH will need a new name, do you suppose SSH would bitch about a name such as OASSH (OASSH Ain't SSH)? (Yes, it's somewhat lame, but at least it's recursive. :-) )
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
out
jki
sick.