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Groupon Backs Down On Gnome

Posted by Soulskill on from the a-little-internet-outrage-is-all-it-takes dept.

Rambo Tribble writes: Groupon has announced it will abandon the 'Gnome' name for their product, ending the recent naming controversy that had the open source community up in arms. They said, "After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for 'Gnome.' We will choose a new name for our product going forward." The GNOME Foundation has thanked everyone who helped.

My question... does this represent Gnu thinking on the part of Groupon?

4 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. I think it goes more like this by msobkow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thing Groupon's thinking was more like "Shit! They're willing to go to court over it!"

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    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  2. Re:Don't mess with the geek's toys by jakimfett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Reading. Do you even?

    Groupon was rolling out a Point-Of-Sale touch interface thin OS system, calling it Gnome. Perhaps you can see how this would possibly be confused with the GNOME touch capable OS, which is (at least in some Lowe's locations) installed on Point-Of-Sale systems.

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    Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com
  3. Is GroupOn Code of Conduct a bad joke? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The GroupOn Global Code of Conduct start with "What Groupon Stands For: Do the right thing--follow the law, act ethically, and treat people properly."

    This attempt to bully a non-profit for use of it's established trademark does not seem to be consistent with the stated code of conduct. For this to drag out from May to November seems to suggest that GroupOn had no intention of following it's own code of conduct. So, if there has been no policy in place at GroupOn to keep this from happening, how long will it be before another non-profit or FOSS project suffers from the same bullying at the hands of GroupOn?

    I'm also curious to know, at what expense of resources did defending the GNOME trademark come at? Who is paying for the expense of resources? Does the projects GroupOn have on github really justify the set-back that GroupOn has created for the GNOME project?

    This revision of the story from Sri Viswanath leaves me with more questions than answers and makes it very clear that GroupOn is not a company I ever want to do business with.

  4. These people just didn't know by salesgeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hate to say, but marketers can be the most oblivious people in the wold. They also create things and have the same feelings of ownership that many of us do when we cook up a heaping helping of awesome code. So, I'm not surprised by Groupon taking a minute to figure out where they stood.

    Last year, the people at my company's marketing department emerged from their cave with a Hire Veterans campaign. Awesome. Except for the fact that the helmet they choose to cap the M-16 with was a Nazi Stahlhelm. When I pointed it out I got the "what do you, developer, know about marketing" response. I answered, "Three of our board of directors are Jewish."

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    -- $G