SPI Formally Non-Profit

Software in the Public Interest, Inc. is now formally a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, meaning that all donations are now tax deductible. SPI is the umbrella organization of several free software projects, primarily Debian, but also GNOME, Berlin, and the Open Hardware project. They (Disclaimer: I am a Debian developer, and thus associated with SPI) claim to hold the Open Source mark.

Comments

Trademark Dispute

[Aaron M. Renn]

I for one think it is a very bad reflection on SPI that they have failed to act in a timely manner on this trademark dispute. They called for comments from the free software community in 1998 (FWIW I told them they should give the mark over to OSI) and said they would have a decision by the beginning on 1999. Well, here we are and it's June and we haven't heard anything out of them. I emailed them in Feb or March and was told they were running behind but hoped to come up with something RSN. (They also told me they got disappointingly few responses).

If SPI wants people to trust them with their money, they need to do better about following through on doing what they say they are going to do. Or at least communicating why it is that they can't do it.

Re:Trademark wars... poll topic?

[David Price]

Unfortunately, the Open Source service mark needs to belong to a specific organization. That's the point of the mark - enforcement. "Free software," unfortunately, is used by many commercial software companies to mean "software that can be acquired for no money." The GNU definition is ignored.

The "Open Source" term was registered as a service mark to bring a little sanity to the advertisement of free software. If a company advertises a product as "Open Source," those viewing the advertisement can be confident (theoretically) that the program's license allows free redistribution and modification. If it doesn't, then the owner of the "Open Source" mark can bring legal action against the offender; therefore, the mark is a clear sign that you're getting free software.

Unfortunately, there's a deadly flaw waiting in the wings. Since the ownership of the mark is in dispute, if either organization ( OSI or SPI) takes legal action, the offending software company will argue that the mark belongs to the other organization.

This will have the effect of playing the two organizations off each other, and ultimately destroying the effectiveness and purity of the "Open Source" term. That would be a blow to our movement, since "Open Source" has become, in the past few months, the term under which many of us identify it.

The ownership of the mark must be resolved, soon, before it has to come before a court. I personally don't care which of the two feuding organizations ends up with it; I trust both to use their best judgement to administer the mark. But it has to belong to only one of them.

Eric, Bruce: one of you must display maturity and selflessness and give up your claim on the mark, before you pull it apart like two children in a tug-of-war that ultimately breaks the toy in dispute.

Re:Trademark wars... poll topic?

[Bruce Perens]

I don't think I have ever screwed up anything as badly as I've screwed up the Open Source trademark. I am frankly at a loss regarding how it will finally be sorted out (and it's out of my hands).

Well, you win a few and lose a few. It's nice to see SPI finish its 501(c)3.

Bruce

Re:There is no Open Source trademark

[Bruce Perens]

I'm not sure that you are correct about the application having expired, given the last paperwork I saw from USPTO. I think OSI can continue to pursue the application, and there is still a dispute with SPI, in which SPI may have a valid claim. Even if that application dies, it's still a trademark, just not a registered one, and registration can be applied for again. I'm not a party to how OSI and SPI are resolving this.

I didn't ask SPI for permission to respond as an officer of SPI regarding the Open Source trademark. That was regarding the Debian trademark, and they did indeed give me permission, and I responded, and as far as I know the Debian trademark is in good shape.

It's "too descriptive"? I'm not sure I agree with that one. It's also in a different trademark category from "OSS.com". I think it's valid - there's only a question regarding ownership.

Thanks

Bruce

Tax consequences

[Bruce Perens]

This means that SPI can use your money to work for free software approximately 1.3 times as efficiently as CoSource or SourceXChange. Given that you are in a 33% U.S. federal tax bracket (average for software engineers), you will essentially get back 33% of what you donate.

Let's not forget that FSF has been a 501(c)3 for at least a decade.

Thanks

Bruce

Bruce Perens and the lynch mob

[Midnight Coder]

I've never meet Bruce Perens, or even e-mailed him, but from reading his work, and from observing his involvement in threads here I gotta say, I like the guy.

He is committed to free software development, he doesn't just talk, he does what it takes to make a difference. I admire him for it.

I've watched people here slander him in the worst possible way, and seen him lose his cool and reply angrily. I didn't think any the less of him for it, to me it made him seem more real, it made it seem like the stuff he is contributing to is really, truely, dear to him. Even if we go away I think he'll stay.

So you say he was involved in the anti-KDE campaign. To me the "anti-KDE campaign" is the worst thing to ever happened in the free software world. It is a shameful story, a witch hunt were innocent developers were attacked for "crimes" they did not commit. The KDE developers did nothing wrong, I wasn't around from the beginning but I've read the mailing list archives and I've watch in horror and disgust over the last year or so.

There is no excuse for what I've witnessed.

Now I know Bruce Perens was part of this, I know he voted against the creation of a KDE newsgroup on usenet, I know there's much I don't know about how he was part of the anti-KDE campaign.

But I believe he is innocent, unlike others who joined the lynch mob in this despicable affair, what he did, he did for the right reasons.

He had every right to criticize the KDE project, people expressed valid concerns, what if MS brought TrollTech and stop giving away QT for free? If would have been the end of KDE that's what.

KDE was about a GUI for unixes, not about freeing the source code. It relied on a toolkit that didn't give us the right to freely modify and distribute it. For some people, for Bruce Perens that wasn't good enough.

Some still criticize KDE they call it evil and make derogatory remarks about the KDE developers. There are still reasons people don't like KDE, they consider C superior to C++, or the only kind of free software the are interested in is GPL'd software, or they won't support a truely international project like KDE because they consider it un-American. I don't think Bruce was interested in any of those reasons though.

Once Bruce was satisfied with the QT license he crossed the line to support KDE. He stepped out of the lynch mob that had flocked around him and shielded the lynchees. That took guts, that's something he should be admired for.

Re:There is no Open Source trademark

[werdna]

The poster is correct that, according to the USPTO database, the application for a federal registration of OPEN SOURCE as a certification mark of software licenses was abandoned for failure to respond to an office action. As Bruce points out, abandonment of an application is not an abandonment of a trademark or a certification mark.

The question of descriptiveness is, well, tricky. Without passing on whether the mark OPEN SOURCE is merely descriptive rather than suggestive as used for licensing services, I will note that even if it is merely descriptive, the mark could still be enforceable if it had obtained secondary meaning. These subtleties are often overlooked in thinking about trademark cases, but they would be at the crux of any legal dispute if one arose.