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Groupon Backs Down On Gnome
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?
My question... does this represent Gnu thinking on the part of Groupon?
The risk was not from the Gnome Foundation's lawyers, but from smartasses all around the Internet coming up with ways to get back at Groupon with names for preposterous services that don't quite infringe on Groupon's trademark.
I was going to point this out to the parent poster but you did it much more gracefully than I would have.
I'm also surprised that if Groupon is so into "open source" they wouldn't have noticed this before submitting the trademark application. Oh, that and the fact they don't capitolize GNOME in their blog post. Maybe they should have said "we're vaguely aware open source exists and we kinda open sourced some tools so that gives us street cred right?".
I thing Groupon's thinking was more like "Shit! They're willing to go to court over it!"
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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...okay, you win on Whole Foods.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com
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.
He he, nice come back... But you do realize that most of those are in completely different markets which doesn't make cause a conflict...
I don't see GNOME trying to bully out the Santa Gnome market: https://www.etsy.com/market/sa...
...gay.
You are right, any resemblance to OS-X is purely coincidental
The problem probably just finally got escalated inside Groupon. Before it was some stupid desk clerk thinking: Oh, some hobbyists I've never heard of are mad that their little programming club has the same name as our new terminal. No big deal.
Then it was "Sue them into next wednesday!" "Burn Groupon to the ground!" "Hang them higher!" and their response being "OMFG! It's a project that's FOSS and Linux and they are all friends with IBM, Oracle and Google. And they've got lawyers!"
Probably some exec with a clue got wind of the situation and concluded that "... yeah, they do have a case and this Gnome Project acutally isn't that small of a deal as one might think. And we have enough bad press as it is. Back down.".
Smart move I'd say.
And they even get a little neat publicity for playing nice.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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."
-- $G
they said, "Crap, the propellerheads found some money. Lost that bet."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
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