Trademarks Considered Harmful To Open Source

An anonymous reader touts a blog posting up at PC World titled "Trademarks: The Hidden Menace." Keir Thomas asks why open source advocates are keen to suggest patent and copyright reform, yet completely ignore the issue of trademarks, which can be just as corrosive to the freedom that open source projects strive to embody. "Even within the Linux community, trademarking can be used as obstructively as copyright and patenting to further business ends. ... Is this how open source is supposed to work? Restricted redistribution? Tight control on who can compile software and still be able to call it by its proper name? ... Trademarking is almost totally incompatible with the essential freedom offered by open source. Trademarking is a way of severely limiting all activity on a particular product to that which you approve of. ... If an open source company embraces trademarks then it embraces this philosophy. On the one hand it advocates freedom, and [on] the other it takes it away."

Comments

I wish...

[Anonymous Coward]

someone would Trademark "First Post"

Re:Decoys, & why Bill Gates thought he was a g

[im_thatoneguy]

That's because kdawson doesn't believe in indentity protection. kdawson gave up his trademark and as such any troll is now free to post stories under his name.

Sincerely,
kdawson

Re:Decoys, & why Bill Gates thought he was a g

[RDW]

'The guy who wrote this insane piece is at best a troll, most likely an expendable pawn.'

Yes, his cover goes so deep his sinister paymasters have even instructed him to write several books about Ubuntu, and even give one of them away for free, presumably as part of a machiavellian plot to undermine other Linux distributions and deprive genuine FOSS-supporting authors of their livelihoods:

http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/download_main.html

Back in 2006, his evil campaign of dangerous misinformation apparently managed to subvert a popular technology blog, which went so far as to describe one of his poisonous publications as 'a good book which is both informative and entertaining at the same time':

http://books.slashdot.org/books/06/03/29/1437217.shtml

I can't even hint at the shocking details of the plot that led to this guy being awarded an Editors' Choice Award by the hopelessly compromised 'Linux Journal' - I have a family to think about, and They know here I live...

Re:Shakespeare said something about this...

[edittard]

if I give you a non-functional crappy piece of software, and called it MS Windows - you wouldn't be too keen to try the *real* windows, would you?

I don't see the difference.

Re:Trademarks helps some of OSS best organisations

[Daengbo]

I live in Asia so I'll just have a "Luby on Lails" conference, and no one will be confused at all.

Re:Decoys, & why Bill Gates thought he was a g

[RDW]

'Now tell me - where has anyone claimed that the author of TFA was a shill?'

'...most likely an expendable pawn'

This is what's called a 'metaphor', and is meant to suggest one under the control of another, more powerful entity. You may be confusing 'pawn' with 'porn', a common mistake often thought to be responsible for the (frequently observed) sharp decline in chess club attendance after the first week, when the terminology is explained. To illustrate:

Expendable pawn:

http://www.darlmcbride.com/

Expendable porn:

http://membres.lycos.fr/fredrichung/forum/nerd%20porn.jpg

Re:Exactly what Microsoft already did

[hairyfeet]

Actually we use VB6 and enjoy the screams of absolute horror from the "real" programmers. He he he!, take that, real programmers!