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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."
I disagree with the whole underlying point of the article. I think Mozilla should be able to stop someone taking their source, adding a whole bunch of unstable "improvements" as patches and calling it Firefox. It would damage a brand that is one of the best brands that FOSS currently has. It doesn't stop people getting the browser, if they don't Mozilla's restrictions they could call it, say, EarthHorse.
The article throws around terms like "restricted distribution" and "severely limiting all activity" but gives examples like CentOS where CentOS and Red Hat exist happily together but with Red Hat still able to build up a brand with some protections.
The article ends "just like patents and traditional copyright, it's totally incompatible with the spirit and ethos of open source software.". People here may not like the length that copyright lasts for but the GPL relies on the fundamental idea of copyright. Similarly there may be some issues with trademarks but if so they need patching not a whole sale revolution as this article seems to suggest.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
It's about protecting your users, and protecting your project.
Take a large, reputable open source project like Audacity. If some scammer comes along and bundles their own version of Audacity with some spyware and tries to distribute it under the Audacity name, this is damaging to both users and the reputation of the software. Audacity's defense against people like this is their trademark. Nobody will confuse real "Audacity" with any ripoff, because nobody else can use the name.
This also protects the developers, who have worked hard to produce great software, and who deserve to have it recognized as something special on their resumes/CVs. Preserving the reputation (ie. name) of your software project helps ensure their contributions to the project aren't devalued.
Lastly, the Mozilla example in the article can easily be countered by the infamous OpenSSL/Debian fiasco, where a Debian packager incorrectly patched OpenSSL and created a vulnerability. This was certainly damaging for OpenSSL's reputation, even though it wasn't their fault. If Ubuntu decides to patch Firefox and introduces bugs, it's Firefox (NOT Ubuntu) who looks bad to users. IMO this is good justification for exercising ownership of your trademark.
Just because source is open does not give you the right to hijack the work of a team and call something by the same name.
It does give you the right to take the source and make something else with it, and that is great. But because so much of the reward of open source is working on something that many people get to use an enjoy, diminishing the power of trademark removes a strong element of motivation by allowing names to mean less through dilution.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"A Rose by any other name is still as sweet."
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Nope, you're confusing that with BSD-style licenses. BSD-style = do what you want with the source, including releasing products without source code. GPL = if you release product using source, you must release source you used to build product. Without copyright, BSD-style is all you'd have.
After reading that article, I agree, and am going to start my own website and magazine called PC World.
The value of trademarks is psychological. Most people attribute value, warmth, and comfort to a name.
Blimey! I think I'm using trademarks wrong. The ones I use just let me identify a product. You get Value! and Warmth! and Comfort!, I want my money back!
I disagree, the problem with copyrights and patents is that they restrict the distribution and development of the 'protected' ideas.
The only restriction a trademark places is that you can't represent yourself as something or someone you're not.
I doubt the author would be happy to find the movie he rented for his children Trademarked as "Disney's the Lion King" was actually hardcore porn.
This sounds like sour grapes that some developers can't coast off the work of others.
Signed,
Keir Thomas
What?
If trademarks are a restriction of freedom, then me using Keir's name to endorse my own ideas sounds like exactly the type of freedom he's arguing for. So what if it breeds confusion and implies an endorsement that doesn't actually exist?
After reading the article the only thing I can say is that the author has no clue about how Trademarks work. The examples don't even make sense. The protection afforded by Trademarks to the consumer is important - more so than other forms of intellectual property. With open source, a trade mark does not prevent you from redistributing the product under a different name or a derivative name. Trademarks are one of the few forms of intellectual property that makes sense. Why is that? Because they evolved organically and were not constitutionalized.
In contrast, copyright has been steadily extended to the point where it no longer serves its original purpose of rewarding the creator. Now copyright rewards the business that buys it up and monetizes the product after the creator is dead. While patent has been extended as a concept to the point where it inhibits the creation of new ideas. Give us back an 8 year patent and a 13 year copyright.
This is what happens when people use the term "IP" - they get things like Trademark and Copyright totally confused.
With FOSS you're free to modify + redistribute. If the project you're redistributing is trademarked then you're going to have to change the name for your modified version.
In fact the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed; obviously the best way to comply with that is to change the name.
Nick
The guy who wrote this insane piece is at best a troll, most likely an expendable pawn.
And he was able to find another troll (kdawson) to post it on slashdot!
It's amazing, every time a stupid article is posted, I scroll to the top and guess who poasted it? kdawson!
Can we please ask the Slashdot editors to avoid tabloid titles?
The title reads "Trademarks Considered Harmful To Open Source".
but it should read: "A Random [Uneducated] Guy Considers Trademarks Harmful To FOSS"
Thanks for listening.
RTFA. Go on, do it.
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Done? Now go and re-read the comments.
Oh, done already? Now tell me - where has anyone claimed that the author of TFA was a shill? What has happened here is the guy got in a bit of trouble over use of the Ubuntu trademarks. Rather than just admit that he had made a mistake, he decided to start spewing FUD about how trademarks are bad.
That act - and that act alone - is why he has been called a troll.
Suppose I build a custom car, I bought a sound system say, from JVC, for it, it doesn't quite fit so I take it apart to change its proportions. Does JVC have a ground to sue me for trademark violation?
If you peel off the JVC logo and stick it on your mod, then yes, they do have grounds to sue you. You need to look back to the OpenSSL/Debian debacle. Yeah, maybe you're "merely changing the case", but what if your change causes a minuscule scratch on a CD whenever it gets ejected? For a while, error-correction hides the damage, but eventually you've got a stack of shiny coasters. Meanwhile, your friends who own similar cars have asked you to do the same mod for them, and you've been putting JVC's logo on the modified versions. Two years down the line, who will your victims call when their media stops playing?
That's why JVC doesn't want to you put their trademark on case mods, and that's why Firefox doesn't want their name on someone else's code.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I completely disagree. Open Source is about freedom. It is not protecting you from your ignorance. If you always want to go with the 'brand' and remain ignorant of possibly better alternatives you should be free to do so.