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Software Freedom Law Center Launches Trademark War Against Software Freedom Conservancy (sfconservancy.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader Bruce Perens writes: The Software Freedom Law Center, a Linux-Foundation supported organization, has asked USPTO to cancel the trademark of the name of the Software Freedom Conservancy, an organization that assists and represents Free Software / Open Source developers.
What makes this bizzare is that SFLC started SFC, SFLC was SFC's law firm and filed for the very same trademark on their behalf, and both organizations were funded by Linux Foundation at the start.
There are a few other wild things that have happened related to this. Eben Moglen, president of SFLC and for decades the General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, is no longer associated with FSF. Linux Foundation has on its executive board a company that is being sued in Germany for violating the GPL, with the case presently under appeal, and the lawsuit is funded by SFC. And remember when Linux Foundation removed the community representative from its executive board, when Karen Sandler, executive director of SFC, said she'd run?
If you need a clue, the SFC are the good guys in this. There's a lot to look into.
What makes this bizzare is that SFLC started SFC, SFLC was SFC's law firm and filed for the very same trademark on their behalf, and both organizations were funded by Linux Foundation at the start.
There are a few other wild things that have happened related to this. Eben Moglen, president of SFLC and for decades the General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, is no longer associated with FSF. Linux Foundation has on its executive board a company that is being sued in Germany for violating the GPL, with the case presently under appeal, and the lawsuit is funded by SFC. And remember when Linux Foundation removed the community representative from its executive board, when Karen Sandler, executive director of SFC, said she'd run?
If you need a clue, the SFC are the good guys in this. There's a lot to look into.
I think you're not in their target audience. I would in general write in C++ rather than C when I have a reason to not do things in Ruby, simply because C++ offers an upgrade over C structures and their management. I try to stay away from STL templates, and haven't used Boost for similar reasons. But I know that Boost has a lot of use at companies, and on some larger projects in the Open Source world.
Bruce Perens.
I'm still working on a blog post. SFC has never represented me and I've never been a member. I do think they're good guys, though, and the Linux Foundation (which is behind this) has devolved to being like loggers who claim to speak for the trees.
Bruce Perens.
The only discussion of this case that I can find is the one on the SFC website, linked in the summary. The petition itself is a bland claim of likelihood of confusion.
By publicly protesting their victimhood the SFC is asking for us to support them, but there just isn't anything to go on here.
Now, they're making the claim that this is completely out of the blue, so maybe that's the point? Is the idea that they don't know anything about this either?
Try learning go Bruce (golang.org). It's C done *right*. If I had to write Samba again from scratch, I'd do it in go.