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Small OSS Library Project Battles US Corporation
New submitter abesottedphoenix writes "The rural library responsible for the first open source library catalogue is under attack from defence contractor PTFS. More than a decade after rolling out Koha (which we've discussed in the past), they now find themselves in a battle to keep a generic Maori term within the public domain. The story is also covered at Radio NZ. "
Am I confused today, or did you mispell Maori?
That said, Trademark only applies in a specific field. If whoever it is has a Trademark for anything other than a library, his trademark in no way impacts the small library in question...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Kia ora from Wellington NZ
Maori was definitely misspelt
link to wikipedia article on the Maori term Koha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(custom)
A commercial company that has been reselling an open-source product now wants to claim ownership of the product itself. Because the current owners are not well funded, there is a prospect that they will be able to do so.
The current owners, being incredibly naive, claim to have been under the impression that foreigners couldn't trademark Maori words. (Possibly they've never heard of Coca-Cola. Even now, they're only trying to fight the trademark application in New Zealand, so I'm not sure what (if any) effect that would have internationally.
Short version: PTFS ended up owning the community domain name and a trademark for Koha due to some weird stuff that has happened over the past 12 years. PTFS is not well regarded by the general community due to how they try to confuse users into thinking theirs is the only version, their practices which (from what I can tell) make versioning a nightmare, and their lack of regard for the community. The community does not want them to gain any more ground.
Sure, PTFS counts some DoD entities among its clients, but it's odd to refer to a company that has clients like the Holocaust Museum and the National Library of Medicine as a defense contractor.
That being said, it's super shady for a company that got started solely to provide end-user support for an OSS system to try and trademark that system's name.
That's what I got out of it...
Not sure what the hell the defense contractor has to do with anything? LibLime appears to be the guilty party here.
Liblime sold themselves to PTFS (a defense contractor) in 2010
'LibLime was founded in 2005, as part of Metavore Inc.[2] and purchased by Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS) in 2010.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liblime
> but this summary just does it - it makes so much "no sense" that
> i have no fucking idea what is it about and i'm just going to skip
> the topic.
which is real a shame, because what is happening is nasty, evil, theft (in the correct IP usage of the term) from a long established volunteer community by newly arrived greedy corporate. Or just take a moment to listen to the linked 2 minute mp3?
here is the real project's "about" page: http://koha-community.org/about/
"Koha" is a Maori word meaning gift (often in a quid quo pro sense). Note that Wikipedia lists it as a custom. It is a truly wonderful name for a GPL'd project for the public good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(custom)
read the mailing list plea from the librarian here:
http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/pipermail/openchat/2011-November/008940.html
a blog post:
http://news.tangatawhenua.com/archives/14545
and the thread that follows.
http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/pipermail/openchat/2011-November/thread.html#8943
favourite quote from the ensuing thread:
listen to more audio from NZ public radio than what's in the /. submission here:
(Scroll down to the Ogg @ 9:44 am)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
The project was founded by a small country town library in 1999 when the Y2K bug was taking out their existing solution and they couldn't afford to buy another one. Since then it has grown to be a large and wonderful FOSS success story. Until last year, when an associated company that held the domain name and provided commercial support got bought out by a big corporate bully, who took ownership of the DNS and domain name, taken over the home page, obfuscated links to and existence of the community (which has had to rush out and register http://koha-community.org/ instead of their original koha dot org site), and now are trying to block the community from being able to use their own name, on their own turf. It seems that Liblime has grabbed the trademark already in the US; the original koha-community.org group after they got over their shock was able to get in first in the EU, but not Liblime (a US company) has moved in to grab it in the community's home country of New Zealand.
PTFS/Liblime's actions here are truly despicable, and if I were a customer I'd have to wonder if they are willing to screw over the people who built up the project from nothing, what is stopping them from screwing me over too?
Please visit the Koha-community.org site, read the plea: http://koha-community.org/plea-horowhenua-library-trust/
and help out their non-existent legal fund with a small donation:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=FQ6JH3L48LV5Y
(your dollar goes far here; they are a registered legal non-profit, paypal's freezing of funds typically happens to unregistered projects who are basically ignoring tax laws, so they should be safe from that)
written article here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/91830/lawyer-labels-overseas-trademark-of-'koha'-offensive
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Wow - there has to be an easier way to explain this. A two three sentence summary perhaps? Like what the problem was before, what great thing was conceived of and what the threat currently is...
Hmmm... simple... let me try.