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The End of the Free PCI Device List (Update)
imann writes "For many years, Jim Boemler was the maintainer of a free PCI device table which reference all the PCI ID's of PCI Devices. This service is used by Free Operating Systems for keeping up to date their pci device list. That was a very usefull service for us (i was working in a Linux distro in the hardware suport team). It was wonderfull until the PCI-SIG had their lawyers cease and desisted him to stop this service because of the use of the PCI logo AND name ! You don't have the right to use the three letters P,C,I ! Incredible... So he was forced to close his website.
This is a incredible loss for the hardware support in the Free Software world. I hope PCI-SIG will change its position !
Please support Jim." A friend emailed me to point out that many /.ers have been emailing the wrong person to complain....read on for details...
Jamal wrote, "The story you posted is causing us a headache. Our CTO, Alan Deikman is being bombarded by emails from people reading that story.
Alan is not the person in charge of the PCI SIG, his only sin is that Znyx
did host the PCI sig in the early 90s and he was the list maintainer. This
was a gracious act and should not be rewarded the way it is now. Infact he is
trying to help the gent with that website to see if things get resolved." Alan's email was posted on the page we linked to, erroneously.
And why do my posts start at 1 all of a sudden. The worlds gone mad, and I never noticed.....
A lot of users (like me) buy hardware often. If a device doesn't have official support for Linux, I am less likely to buy it... If the kernel doesn't even recognize it... well, they aren't gonna be selling me one.
I can't see how this group is going to come out ahead by doing this. The small amount of money the y (might) take in selling the information is going to be dramatically offset by the much larger amount of money their sponsors/patrons lose in sales.
Just change every instance of 'PCI' on the webpage and documentation to 'Peripheral Component Interconnect' with the first letter of each word much larger than the others.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
It never ceases to amaze me how easily technology organizations shoot themselves in the foot. Let's punish the developer community making our standards-based hardware more valuable!
That also begs a question - does trademark allow you to prevent use of a word totally or just for marketing purposes. I seem to remember from school that suing someone claiming their product was "a PCI card" that wasn't licensed to do so is one thing, but saying "this card works in PCI bus systems" is quite another... and not actionalble.
-- $G
The trademark was granted only three months ago. It states on it that first use was Dec '94.
Does it really take eight years to file a trademark, or does this seem more like something they did specifically so they could sue other people? Maybe this guy is just the poor test case. Try it on him and if it works, go for a bigger fish...
(Score: -1, Stupid)
In the true slashdot tradition, I did not read the article, however:
* PCI is kind of like "kleenex"; It's a common-place word that is used to describe something, usually not a company or organization. If I recall correctly, there was a legal ruling about pretty much this same situation, the plantif being Kleenex. The court did not rule in Kleenex's favor.
* If we really want to get nitty-gritty about it, couldn't he just replace every instance of "PCI" in his site with "Peripheral Component Interconnect bus", thus (all be it wordy) technically describing the DEVICE, and not using the "trademarked PCI name"?
* How does this fall under the "please don't buy our hardware dept."??? It doesn't seem that PCI-SIG even SELLS hardware.
If you look at the PCI-SIG home page you'll see a little animation mentioning that "Board members are members of the following companies...".
Guess who shows up at the top of the list when you follow the link?
Chair
Tony Pierce
Microsoft Corporation
Well. That explains a lot.
This article needs to be on a few more websites,
I'd say change the name and thumb your nose at them... this is too valuable a service to lose to some copyright holder and their nitpicking attorneys.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
1. I think someone else was behind pushing the group to target Jim's site. Some groups of people would love nothing more than to hurt the open source community. Insert name of your favourite illegal monopoly here.
2. I think Jim over-reacted. Perhaps he didn't realise quite how much not only the PCI group, but free sotware developers depended on his list. In computing, there really is no room for wounded pride.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
To: Alan.Deikman@znyx.com
Cc: mcohen@schwabe.com
Subject: I can't believe you guys shut down the free PCI device table!!!
I can't believe you guys shut down the free PCI device table!!! I'm flabbergasted. I can't think of any possible reason you would do this. Don't you have anything else better to do than close down an extrememly helpful website? The webmaster spent thousands of dollars out of his own pocket for the love of a product. The owners of that product now thank him for 6 years of work by kicking him in the proverbial nuts? We all know it was just a guy helping other guys out, and that he had no relation to your company. What exactly do you have to gain from this? What do you lose by having more systems support your architecture? This makes zero sense. He helped people to use your technology. He pushed your technology! He was free advertisement. And all the time he has been doing this, we have thought of you as one of the FEW, RARE consortiums that were not COMPLETELY out of touch with your users. Well, now we can see that you are. You are only interested in money, and you view all your clients as potential thiefs, and potential defendants. Yesterday you were an example, but today, you're just a statistic. You're just another consumer-crushing entity. Instead of a group that people look to for help, you've become a power-, money-, and blood-thirsty group that people fear because you have no respect for them, their interests, or their rights; only your bottom line. Well, time to push you from the small stack of reputable groups on the right, to the huge, towering pile of examples of immoral societal plagues on the left.
It was nice while it lasted.
Kurt
It's just about corporate stupidity and pride. Some suit found the website and went crazy, no business plan, no money to be made, it's just about pride, envy and stupidity. And by the way, what else has PCI-SIG to do except surfing the web all day long and bragging about how great they are?
For a better understanding look here, large organizations really work that way.
PCI-SGI may be stupid, but they are not so stupid to really believe they can make serious money on selling such a service.
You really have to dig on the PCI-SIG site to find the three words, Peripheral Component Interconnect. It's conspicuously absent from the front page. Those are probably too generic to defend, if it stood for something really wierd and logically unrelated like Papaya Canola Interface then it would be more defensible.
For example, you can't trademark Wrench brand wrenches, you CAN trademark Wrench brand apples.
The three letters are easier to defend as a trademark if they're just three letters, not if they stand for something related.
(That's a tough one though, there's alot of action over three letter trademarks right now.)
Either way, three letters are pretty generic, so they probably CAN'T get you on that, strictly speaking, but they're bigger and have more money, and he who has the gold makes the rules, so therefore, they can.
I'm not an expert, but I do play one on TV.
Unfortunanlty, when dealing with something like this there has to be a paper trail. SO if they just call him up, and somehow it turns into a big issue they could find themselves in a position where they shot them selves in the foot. Is it right that they lawyers need to get involved and draft a legal letter, no. However it's what they NEED to do for legal reasons. The way I understand this, he was offering a great service, they had a small problem with some of the format he presented the info, they come to him in a legal way to try and get this resolved (nicely) and he desides to shut down his service. Why is he shutting down? Sounds to me like he's shutting down out of spite. Now that's a good response, punish everyone else because your ego got bruised becasue someone else did something the proper way. I know, SOMEONE is gunna feel the need to modify this a flamebait, and if that's how it goes fine. The point i'm trying to make (which is not flame bait) is that there doesn't appeard to be any LOGICAL reason for this service to go away, it just needs a few changes which would probbly take almost no real time to make.
As always, Google saves the day. Someone save this list, and throw it on Kazaa.
Now PCI-SIG has to go after Google, and Kazaa, and 1000's of Linux users. Someone keep updating the list, pass it around. Don't let it die.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
http://www.pcisig.com/feedback
I'd suggest (IANAL) that he simply remove any copies of the PCI logo and put up a disclaimer that he has absolutely no affiliation with the PCI-SIG group other than the fact that they tried to shut down his website and hi-jack the database from him.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Or something like that
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
Don't copy it, but feel free to make similar points. My take on this is this is probably a young, inexperienced lawyer who thought it was big and cool to go in with all guns blazing, and is now (I suspect) desperately trying to dig himself out of the shit. If, on the other hand, PCI-SIG actually instructed him to write in these terms, they deserve everything they get.
Dear Michael Cohen
I appreciate that you're probably getting a lot of grief from strangers today, and probably feel bewildered and a little hurt. You probably feel that you were just doing your job, and that people (including me) are just shooting the messenger.
That's true, of course, to a degree. But in this case it isn't an adequate excuse. Yes, as a lawyer, your job is, in the end, to do what your client instructs. But when your client instructs you to do something extraordinarily foolish and liable to cause grave damage to your clients' own interests, part of a responsible lawyers duty is to councel caution and reflection.
Your clients members are, as a consequence of your action, denied access to a data resource which is vital to them. To replace this resource, which you have by your action denied to them, will cost them many thousands of dollars, delay development of new devices, and cause untold confusion. At the same time, their goodwill and reputation among the technical community on which they depend is in tatters. What possible benefit did you see to your client, and how do you propose that they should go about repairing the damage that has been caused?
After a letter as unnecessarily offensive and aggressive as that which is posted here http://www.yourvote.com/pci/Scanned_.pdf over your signature, saying sorry is not likely to be enough. This isn't a matter of ego, virility, and big swinging dicks. It's a community where people provide resources out of good will and a spirit of co-operation, and you cannot simply go rampaging about in your elephant boots. You (and your clients) have a very great deal of humble pie to eat.
Yours Sincerely
Simon Brooke
Chief Technical Officer, Scaffie Ltd.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I notice that Tony Pierce of MS is on the Board at PCI-SIG. You may wnat to point out that their Knowledge base article q298837 points customers to www.yourvote.com/pci in order to ID unknown devices. I wrote the article and KNOW for a fact it is used daily be MS support techs while assisting customers.
~Z