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Secure Shell Will Remain 'SSH'
cdlu sent in a follow-up to the SSH dispute - the IETF has rejected a request from SSH, the company, to change the name of SSH, the protocol. This will save a lot of people from typing 'ln -s /usr/bin/secsh /usr/bin/ssh'.
IETF sued for trademark infringement.
I wonder if International Paper have a trademark on their initials?
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KlausBreuer,
I'd like to ask you to change your login name. Your name infringes on my trademark. I know this is an inconvenience for you, but I would greatly appreciate it. Please?
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And I'll bet you wouldn't do it, no matter how nice the request.
Why should the IETF inconvenience MILLIONS of users so that a single individual can profit?
They decided not to change the usage of the word SSH as the name of the protocol. What OpenSSH decides to call its binaries is an entirely different decision that the IETF has nothing to do with.
For the record, the decision in the room was somewhat split, leaning about 2:1 towards not changing the name. It's still unclear if the name will be trademarked in the documents, which was the second (replaced?) request made to the IETF secure shell working group.
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He could win. Several months ago (and I don't have time to find the link) a domain name had to be given up by its holder even though the ICANN arbitration held that he didn't. The person who wanted the name just sued in US court for trademark infringement, and won. You see, the IETF decisions are not binding in the courts. So Ylonnen could sue for trademark infringement. If he won, it would not matter what the IETF said.
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I know that we here as /. are against all things related to intellectual property, but perhaps its time to look at the other side. Trademarks (in the US) are *NOT* designed to protect companies... they are designed to protect consumers. What you say ? They exist (primarily) so that consumers know where a product actually came from. Tatu has been *VERY* liberal in his offer to allow usage of ssh (if he had been granted a trademark) and all he (seems) to have been concerned about is persons NOT his customers believing that they were. This is NOT a Bad Thing (tm). Trademarks and Trademark law DO serve a useful purpose in our society, and its sad that this community has its typical knee jerk reaction.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
In his original license he said that if someone modified his code and it was compatible with the original, it HAD to be called ssh. The others are still compatible with his code and based on it..so they are just doing what he originally asked.
Simple? Yes. Polite terms? Yes. Reasonable? Not even close, if my understanding of the situation is correct. As I understand it, the guy who doesn't want them to use his SSH trademark anymore is the same guy who was involved in the development of the protocol/standard in the first place. At best, he's guilty of deciding way after the fact that he didn't want them using SSH as a name. At worst, he's trying to delibrately use a "submarine trademark" to monopolize the name recognition SSH has gained, in no small part due to the standard itself.