Slashdot Mirror
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. "
I think you mean Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
I know it is pointless to say - but RTFA. PTFS wants the trademark for their fork of the library software.
ok. usually i can understand /. summary immediately. sometimes i have to read the article. sometimes i have to do some extra research.
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.
Rich
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)
Basically a company who has extended and NOT given back to the community is now wanting the trademark the name of the Open Source product.
http://blog.karit.geek.nz/
No?
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.
Can someone explain to me how this isn't a violation of the copyleft GPL Koha is distributed under?
They would have spelled the term correctly, but to do so violates someones trademark on the term "M-a-o-r-i"
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
I for one note the correct spelling of the word 'Maori' and find this site grinding at my roots up to my boots in incompetence!!
I don't think he misspelled Maori deliberately - I've submitted one of the dupes to this story - the Slashdot editing/preview ate the a-macron in Maori and displays it as Mori instead; so I expect abesottedphoenix did the same thing.
Is Koha a generic Mori (Maori) term? What is a library catalog? Like a public library catalog of the books in the library? Who is PTFS?
As far as the TM goes, If I make up a word called Azkio but it turns out to be a generic term in a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recognize does that mean a TM is invalidated?
Koha is the Maori word for "gift" - It's about as generic as the english word "gift". An example in the New Zealand context would be Te Papa Tongarewa (translates as "container of treasures" - the National Museum of New Zealand) having a box by the door labelled "Koha" in the hope you'll put some money in it to help support the museum and to show your appreciation for the place.
If you ask almost any New Zealander what Koha is (that's approximately 4 million people) they'd nearly all say it means gift or donation.
IANAL But the Tabasco story is a famous and an interesting trademark case .
Since Tabasco is a state in Mexico and a name for a pepper, McIllhenny understandably had a hard time cementing its claim. Right or wrong, McIllhenny vigorously defends this hard-won mark to this day.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Not even "Māori" displays correctly. How come slashdot still doesn't support non ASCII characters? At this point it is probably more of a tradition thing than difficulty of implementation, right?
I am unable to adequately express my dismay regarding your sheer ignorance of the situation at hand.
So, if you could just punch yourself in the face, just as hard as you can, that'd be great. Well, it wouldn't be great for *you*, but I'd feel a whole lot better knowing it had been done.
Thanks.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Just legally possible, although not morally defensible. The law, we all know well, does not always equate to justice. And that is especially true of IP law, of course.
By referencing this case I was pointing out that the NZ library has every reason to be worried. Since this rather creepy little company going after the Maori trademark has plenty of creepy company. I had no intention of defending them.
Personally I am outraged by Daddy Pepperbucks century of non-stop litigious bullying. They even went after a punk rocker who used a "Tabasco" moniker. Was it Annie Tabasco..? or Suzy Tabasco...? or... Someone help me here. The early 80s are a bit.... fuzzy.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
a language that less than .0002% of the people in the world would recognize does that mean a TM is invalidated?
By my rough calculation our 4 million people gives us 0.057% of the world's population recognising the phrase :-)
The basic fact is that this is an extremely arrogant move. A company is taking a "common word", which ironically means gift, and using it for commercial gain for open source software that was created in the very country they're applying their trademark in.
The Maori meaning of "koha" is more complex than Gift - and if you start to understand the moral obligation that underpins true "koha" - you really feel that these guys are a bunch of knob-ends.
That said, our intellectual property office recently let a large brewery trademark the term "Radler" - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10738427 - so unfortunately they might be needing their legal fund to try and get Koha back out of corporate hands.
but this kind of behaviour is not OK in New Zealand. What if someone from NZ snuck over and trademarked "Honour" (or "Honor" on your side of the pond)?
Frankly, I'm fed up with corporations behaving like this then bleating that they are only doing it to secure their profits which justifies anything as you know. Time they got taken down a peg or two.