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Company Takes Over Well-Known OSS Developer's Name Because the Domain Was Free

Posted by msmash on from the messy-situations dept.

New submitter Fatalis writes: Substack is a venture capital funded startup for subscription-based newsletters, and it admittedly chose its name following the advice from a Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator) article to prefer names not registered in the .com zone. The same name has also been the user handle for a prolific open-source developer who now finds themselves competing for recognition in the tech space with a capital backed company. The lesson seems to be for developers to protect their personal brand by registering a domain name with the .com extension due to it being perceived as the default.

12 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. There's another way to protect a brand by omnichad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The lesson seems to be for developers to protect their personal brand by registering a domain name with the .com extension due to it being perceived as the default.

    If your handle is really a brand and important to preserve, then register it with the US Patent & Trademark Office. You can register the .com, but you don't need to in order to protect yourself. If it's not important enough for all that, then maybe your "personal brand" is not that important at all.

    1. Re:There's another way to protect a brand by Going_Digital · · Score: 2

      Except registering a trademark protects you for a single category of goods or services. If you registered a trademark for software someone else could register the same word for financial services as they are sufficiently different to not be considered as causing confusion.

  2. Sucks if you have a popular name. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Or in my case a name of a sports star. However the persons name has always been tricky in the domain world.
    Just if Microsoft tried to sue MikeRowe.com Because the actor MikeRowe phonically is similar.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Sucks if you have a popular name. by gnick · · Score: 2

      Just if Microsoft tried to sue MikeRowe.com Because the actor MikeRowe phonically is similar.

      They did sue Mike Rowe, but not the celebrity and not MikeRowe.com. It was a student who registered MikeRoweSoft.com.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  3. And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't expect to own my username unless I copyright it, nor should you. Open source developers, no matter how prolific, just have handles like the rest of us open source developers and -- *shock* -- gamers.

    Linked in the summary, his own public (and therefore open source) GitHub history doesn't backup being a prolific open source developer anymore and hasn't been for the past ~1.5 years. Plus I have no idea who the heck he is and I cannot tell if his real name is James Halliday, or if he took that name as a joke after Ready Player One.

    Well known to you is not necessarily well known to the world. He seems like he's probably popular in the JS community, but how that makes this a remotely serious issue is still unknown to me. Copyright your name if you want to own and probably buy the .com domain while you're at it. Otherwise you clearly didn't care enough about your name to actually own it.

    1. Re:And? by omnichad · · Score: 2

      I don't expect to own my username unless I copyright it, nor should you.

      That would be a trademark you'd want. There's not much content there to copyright.

  4. this is too much. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now you have to make sure your new company name or product doesn't collide with a fucking internet user handle? Nope. If your handle is important enough to you, trademark it or stfu.

    http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4801:qvpw13.2.1

  5. Re:Use your real name, not a handle by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    My real name is Micro Soft. (Getting dates with that name is not easy.)

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  6. In Other News . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Internet is a Big Place, and just because you think you are important in your little niche, you really aren't.

    "Well-known OSS developer"? Yeah, right. That and $8 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

  7. Re:Use your real name, not a handle by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except they can and did.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  8. Re:Use your real name, not a handle by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    What you call my "real name" is the handle my parents selected for me. It happens to be based on anglicized Hebrew, as is typical of names of European Christians. Except I'm not Christian, my most ancient ancestors were not Christian, and I was not born in medieval Europe.

    In contrast, the handle I've selected for myself does have significance to me and is related to my own personal events.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  9. Re:This would be illegal in Germany ... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    This is true, companies out there are always thinking "We'd be so much more popular if only we had names like miguel (all lowercase), LennartPoettering, Linus, or TheoDeRaadt." That's surely what happened here, a company just threw its morals to the wind, thinking "This substack guy is known to everyone, he's a household name, all open source developers are! We must take advantage of his world wide popularity and give our company the same name."

    In the mean time, I'm off to the supermarket to buy some of those new BrandonEich frozen meals and some Stallman Cookies. They're probably not legal in Germany, but...

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.