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SSC vs LinuxGazette.net Continued
An anonymous reader writes "To update an earlier story about the pending battle between SSC and LinuxGazette.net, it seems SSC has taken to officially asserting a trademark on the term 'Linux Gazette' and is asking them to relinquish the domain name. Interesting to note that LinuxGazette.net has issue 97 out, while SSC doesn't."
It seems a little more complicated than that (from here):
Until recently, SSC provided web hosting for the Gazette and allowed some of its (SSC's) staff to assist in production of the Gazette during working hours.
However, all that seems to have changed. SSC is now running a site at linuxgazette.com which it calls Linux Gazette. The people who were running Linux Gazette earlier have moved to a new site at linuxgazette.net - and are running Linux Gazette as well!
According to an explanation posted by SSC, "a group of the Linux Gazette contributors opposed the transition of our site to a Content Management System. While we did our best to address the concerns, some have elected to leave Linux Gazette and start their own publication. We regret their decision but as (most) were volunteers, it certainly is their right.
"Unfortunately, they have so far continued to use our Linux Gazette trademark in conjunction with their new site. Until such time as they stop using that trademark, we have been advised to remove any references to that mis-use (sic) from our site."
According to Rick Moen, contributing editor of Linux Gazette, the decision to move was due to a number of things, "including SSC's unexplained, unannounced, retroactive deletions of prior issues' articles, its stripping of authors' copyright notices and substitution of their own corporate one, and its proclaimed plans to make LG cease being a magazine and cease having editors, turning it into solely a dynamic Web site."
Moen said after the move to new quarters, SSC "to our astonishment produced a November issue purporting to be Linux Gazette, immediately after our November issue went to press. This was surprising because we'd been told they intended that monthly magazine issues would cease."
You need to read more about this. Ownership of LG was never tranferred to SSC, and SSC merely offered hosting and other support to a preexisting publication. That publication still exists, but no longer with SSC. What SSC has is anyone's guess.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
For the first year it was a completely independent web periodical. That changed in 1996.
:-) "
m l
I don't like SCC's dirty tactics but the Welcome section in issue 8 may be why they think they own the name:
"News Flash!
Linux Gazette coming under New Management!
Yup, it's true! As of the next LG issue the Linux Gazette will officially come under the auspices of the Linux Journal . The 'ol Linux Gazette has grown over the past year -- this is actually its First Birthday this month -- and it is probably fitting that after a year it's ready to come under the watch care of the folks at Linux Journal. Phil Hughes has very graciously offered to take over the day-to-day management of the Linux Gazette while continuing its tradition as a free and freely available WWW publication.
For details of the transition, please head on down to the "Welcome" section below and read all about it.
http://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue01to08/lg_issue8.ht
Scroll down to the Welcome section. I can easily see how SCC can think they own LG.
I would personally like to see an itemized list of the accusations against SCC, people claim editing and altering past articles, and gradually forcing out the original staff. I'd like to see what known changes are and the chronology of when non-SCC volunteers were forced out, if that happened. If the emails used in forging a deal between LG and SCC are still available, I'd like to read them.
John M. Fisk writes (as part of this "Welcome") in issue 8: I've decided to turn the Linux Gazette over to the Linux Journal.
and furthermore writes: I think that the Gazette has demonstrated the "proof of concept" -- that a freely available and open-to-all online publication is a great means for sharing information and ideas. There are a number of great things that could be done with this and I'm excited about the Gazette continuing on in this tradition.
So I can see why SSC thinks that they're in charge -- the previous "in charge" said so. And the "great things that could be done" bit certainly allows for trying to change the format, as long as it's still "freely available and open-to-all". 'Course, we don't know what the changes were turning into, eg. Slashdot is freely available and open to all but you get it earlier if you subscribe (but not enough earlier to claim that it's not really free).
The people who've been volunteering in the years since have some grounds with respect to copyright on their articles, but volunteering for something doesn't make you in charge (any more than hosting would make SSC in charge). You'd need paperwork from that time to figure out this mess, I agree.
However, legally correct business is frequently not good business, and screwing over key people in the Linux community is not a good way to sell subscriptions to the Linux Journal. If they're rewinding the changes, it would make sense to try for an agreement with the volunteer staff rather than bully them.
Who filed what when isn't the point. Filing the trademark application is a formality to make it easier in a potential court battle, but trademark protection is primarily linked to use of the name and how much effort you have put into protecting it.
dont even play that game.
," we thank SSC and hope they will take ownership and run it as they see fit."
DNS registry information means nothing other than ownership of a few characters. SSC was NOT running The Linux Gazette. they were donating space. that is a very HUGE difference between running it and helping it.
Some of their staff were allowed to contribute to the linux Gazette.
Nowhere was there a transfer of ownership or did the creators of Linux Gazette ever say
the Linux Gazette is not and never was the property of SSC. They are being complete and utter jerks about this, and simply are trying to steal something that has a larger readership than the abortion that the Linux Journal has been for the past 2-3 years. (The linux Journal was a GREAT magazine... now it's as worthless as a Ziff-Davis computer publication)
SSC claims it's interests are for the good of linux... They refused to buy The Perl Journal, one of the best programming publications this side of Dobbs's publication. They refused to change The linux Journal back to it's origional user direction from it's current corperate pinhead focus.
the little guy is not being the jerk in this case. SSC wants to make the Linux Gazette into a worthless publication just like how they have made the Linux Journal. The Creators and Owners of the Linux Gazette dont like it so they grabbed their ball and left.
SSC is violating the trademark of Linux Gazette and now they are trying to steal it completely.
Moral of the story? if a company wants to help your effort... do NOT accept their help, they cant be trusted as when the changing of the leadership will assume they own you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Your comments certainly make sense, as far as they go, but it seems to me that you're overlooking a material fact in the matter. The Gazette was formed in 1995, by the volunteers. They started working with SSC in '96.
.net site.
At some point this year the volunteers decided to split from SSC. Then SSC goes out to trademark a name someone else has used for roughly eight years. SSC claims they've been using the name since '96. So what? The volunteers have been using it since '95.
You say, "SSC is in it's right as it's been exploiting the Linux Gazette name for longer"
This appears not to be true, at least according to the
That said, if SSC had been smart and filed in '96 when Linux Gazette was moved to them, their trademark would have been "incontestable" now (which doesn't actually mean it's completely incontestable, but the burden of proof to have the mark declared invalid would be substantially higher)
The issue is more complex than you and a lot of other people make it out to be.
First of all, SSC didn't start Linux Gazette. The first LG issue was released July 1995, run entirely by volunteers. It was in issue 8 where LG was given the support of SSC, by hosting and editing support. I really can't tell if SSC was given the right to do with LJ or the name as they please or not.
Some people said that ALL of the orininal LG volunteers have left the SCC pub, after some others were forced out and there are claims of re-editing of old articles without the original author's permissions.
publisher@linuxgazette.com works. Phil Hughes may even answer your mail personally.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
This achive of Issue # 8 seems to be unclear as to what happened when they started being hosted by Linux Journal.
That seems to support lg.net's position - Just a hosting arangement.
But..
That seems to show that Fisk is turning it over to SCC. If that is the case then this is SCC's baby now. You can see in the write up where each side is getting their views
Net result, this could have all been handled with a little more tact on both sides. If SCC had just followed the wishes of the people who produced the article, this wouldn't have been a problem.
It should have been the creators of the work, the volunteers, who should have been deciding on what direction the magazine should take. Not some marketroid who found way to suck $$, or techie who felt this was his site, and wanted to put up a CMS and/or excert his power.
I from what I read of #8, I would have to say SCC has the stronger argument, even if they have the
Though two sources of free online linux articles is better then one.
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
We didn't "leave because we don't like CMSs" (Phil Hughes's claim)
It wasn't "some of the volunteers" (Phil Hughes's claim) but rather 100% of the staff by unanimous decision
We didn't spring the decision to move on SSC by surprise at the last minute (Phil Hughes's claim), but rather had warned them for months about what would happen if they went ahead with their plan.
The editors moved LG to new quarters in part because SSC had said the monthly magazine would cease to exist entirely. (We had no idea SSC would change its mind later and direct uncredited SSC employees to resume producing issues at our old site.) I.e., we actually don't think it's OK to "open up a new site under exactly the same name, even using the same logo", nor were we starting "a spinoff under the same name"; it was a question of move the magazine or let SSC kill the magazine by corporate decree, according to everything they'd told us.
Founder John M. Fisk, in 1996, transferred custody LG to SSC explicitly as a free magazine to be run in harmony with SSC's commercial magazine, Linux Journal. It was explicitly not to be a commercial property.
You cannot "own a name": You can own a commercial brand identity, but Linux Gazette has never been a commercial offering. SSC's assertion to the contrary in its USPTO filing is materially false.
Ownership of everything in LG is retained by each individual contributor, and issued to the public under an open-source licence -- just like with the Linux kernel
Even successful assertion of a trademark that you prove you own lets you enjoin only competing commercial goods or services using your mark in ways likely to confuse your customers into thinking those are your offerings. SSC's attempt to misuse trademark law -- in which they showed no interest for seven years until the very day we told them we were moving the magazine -- against our volunteer magazine seems to assume we're clueless techies and ignorant of trademark law fundamentals.
Discussion of the matter has been occurring at LWN. Here are my two recent posts:
"Chilling Effects" letter received from SSC, Inc.
(Posted Dec 5, 2003 9:05 UTC (Fri) by rickmoen) (Post reply)
Alan Cox wrote:
John Fisk founded Linux Gazette in 1995. He's not visibly part of either side of the argument which begs the question who did he give it to.
It's a fair question, and the top-level answer is that copyright over all content belongs to the individual authors, being published by each of them under an open-source licence (in LG's case, OPL v. 1.0, and two predecessor open-source licences for very early issues). Alan's no doubt very familiar with this concept. {grin}
Alan is of course thinking of some concept of ownership over the magazine as a whole, and that too is a fair question: The answer is that there's really nothing of that sort to own. The compilation copyright (if any) would likewise be OPL-licensed, and LG was from its inception explicitly a community, non-profit effort.
And that leaves an equally fair third question: What was it that John M. Fisk entrusted to SSC, Inc. -- subject to the promise to keep it non-commercial -- when medical school was keeping him too busy to keep things going? Please read again what John wrote: Phil Hughes and SSC, Inc. willingly assumed (and carried out admirably for many years) an obligation, a volunteer job, a custodianship.
And explicitly not over a corporate balance sheet asset, a lesson that Mr. Hughes seems to have f
The name of the magazine is not linuxgazette.com. It is Linux Gazette. The fact that their host decided to appropriate the site for a different and unwelcome format does not mean they lose the right to the name of the magazine they created prior to their host being their host. So, they took their magazine, Linux Gazette, elsewhere.
The second biggest mistake in all of this is that somebody somewhere trusted SSC, a for-profit business, enough to let them register linuxgazette.com, rather than place that domain the hands of a core volunteer or the magazine founder. That is the huge, primary source of the issue, as there are so many people (you included it seems) who presume that who owns the domain therefore owns the content. That isn't always true, and it isn't true here.
The first biggest mistake is that people are too trustworthy. Projects such as this should recognize that they exist in the real world, and in the real world formalities are needed. Linux Gazette (and all other projects with a group concept of "ownership") should have been incorporated and then registered as a non-profit organization. The paperwork isn't that hard, the yearly costs are minimal, and it helps avoid these issues because then there is in fact a real tangible owner.
As it is, this is a he-said she-said issue, which it seems will have to be sorted out by a court and lawyers. Though it is obvious to me who is right, and it isn't SSC.
Larry