Copyright and Trademark are different. Listar is copyrighted; someone can't just take the project, file off the name and numbers, and market it as their own thing. Copyright covers a complete work itself, not the name. Trademarks cover logos, words, names, terms, slogans, mottos, etc.
A good example of the difference would be the Harry Potter books. The author of the books (or the original publisher, I'm not sure in this particular case) holds the copyright on the books and world and characters. You can't take the story or world or characters and do something with it without being in violation of copyright.
That said, when the books were published, 'Harry Potter' and 'Hogwarts' and all the other distinctive names in the book were NOT trademarked. As a result, I could've come up with something else somewhere else and called it 'Hogwarts'.
Because of this, when Warner Brothers decided to make a Harry Potter movie, they went and trademarked as many of the terms from the book as they could; now 'Harry Potter' and 'Hogwarts' and 'Slytherin' and all those other terms are trademarked by WB.
Sorry, it was the only really good example I could think of offhand.:)
In the case of my Listar as opposed to MCF/StarNINE's ListSTAR, it's demonstratable that the Listar project knew there was potential confusion (witness my statement about contacting StarNINE two years ago when ListSTAR was defunct, and being told 'don't worry about it'), and that the trademark had been around before Listar was. Even though ListSTAR is a coined phrase and Listar is a Spanish vocabulary word, I can see the potential confusion.
Now, in SSH versus OpenSSH, it's a bit more complicated. SSH is a protocol as well as a program. It'd be like if Microsoft trademarked 'telnet' simply because of Windows Telnet. That said, Ylonen has a legitimate concern, if he's getting support requests for people wanting support for OpenSSH; that demonstrates a bit of confusion. But he knew OpenSSH was around and didn't make an effort to enforce the trademark, which leads to some worry about whether or not he was seriously protecting it. (If you don't seriously protect a trademark, you can lose it.)
The OpenSSH versus SSH dispute is much blurrier; there's easy ways to look at it from either side. As much as I hate having to rename a project, however, I don't think anyone can legitimately claim that Listar has a leg to stand on if we wanted to dispute ListSTAR's trademark.
Besides, I'm looking on the bright side as far as Listar is concerned. When I originally spoke to StarNINE, one thing I had promised was not to port to the platforms they ran on, to avoid confusion. If Listar changes its name... hey, I'm sure the Macintosh community wouldn't mind a freely available OpenSource mailing list package.;)
Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel Blackman, the original designer/author of Listar, and still the lead developer on it. I'd like to make a clarification here.:)
Neither I nor any other member of the Listar project holds ill-will against MCF for enforcing the trademark. The whole story is simply this:
When I started writing Listar, it was a replacement for Majordomo specifically for my own machines. I called it 'Listar', the Spanish word for 'list'. It wasn't until a year later that 'ListSTAR' came to my attention, since, well, I don't use Macintoshes. I contacted StarNINE, then the owners of the package, and was told 'ListSTAR is defunct and no longer sold or supported, plus you're under UNIX and we're under Macintosh. Don't stress it.' So, perhaps unwisely, I didn't.
Fast-forward two years, to when a company named MCF Software bought ListSTAR from the remains of StarNINE. The product is now revived and thus no longer defunct, and Listar (which can run on the FreeBSD-based MacOS X, where ListSTAR does not) is suddenly both a threat to the trademark and a potential source of confusion. Faroukh Irani of MCF contacted the Listar project politely about the name change and didn't get lawyers involved at all. He handled it very nicely, and should be commended for that. Nor is he in the wrong to enforce his trademark; this wasn't a case of 'the little guy' getting stomped on, this was a case of an unfortunate case where the situation changed and not to the benefit of the Open Source project.
That said, we have gone and picked another (not yet announced) name, and we want to trademark that to prevent future confusion. Our problem is that in looking into that, we've found that it is very hard to trademark something - enforcably - which is not used in commercial trade.
People say 'Linux is trademarked by Torvalds', but that's not entirely true. From what I've found in my poking around, SSC (who publish Linux Journal) and RedHat - both of whom use 'Linux' in commercial trade - obtained the trademark on behalf of Torvalds.
It seems like trademark law is biased against free and open projects, probably largely due to ignorance and outdated laws. The question here is simply... has anyone ever really looked into trademarking an OpenSource project in an enforcable way?
I have no problem with changing the name of this mailing list package now, over the ListSTAR dispute, but I have a great deal of trouble with the idea that I could have the name stolen out from under me again in another three years if someone decides they like it for their own commercial project. Hence the desire to obtain a legal trademark on it.:)
Slashdot Mirror
A good example of the difference would be the Harry Potter books. The author of the books (or the original publisher, I'm not sure in this particular case) holds the copyright on the books and world and characters. You can't take the story or world or characters and do something with it without being in violation of copyright.
That said, when the books were published, 'Harry Potter' and 'Hogwarts' and all the other distinctive names in the book were NOT trademarked. As a result, I could've come up with something else somewhere else and called it 'Hogwarts'.
Because of this, when Warner Brothers decided to make a Harry Potter movie, they went and trademarked as many of the terms from the book as they could; now 'Harry Potter' and 'Hogwarts' and 'Slytherin' and all those other terms are trademarked by WB.
Sorry, it was the only really good example I could think of offhand. :)
--Sparks
In the case of my Listar as opposed to MCF/StarNINE's ListSTAR, it's demonstratable that the Listar project knew there was potential confusion (witness my statement about contacting StarNINE two years ago when ListSTAR was defunct, and being told 'don't worry about it'), and that the trademark had been around before Listar was. Even though ListSTAR is a coined phrase and Listar is a Spanish vocabulary word, I can see the potential confusion.
Now, in SSH versus OpenSSH, it's a bit more complicated. SSH is a protocol as well as a program. It'd be like if Microsoft trademarked 'telnet' simply because of Windows Telnet. That said, Ylonen has a legitimate concern, if he's getting support requests for people wanting support for OpenSSH; that demonstrates a bit of confusion. But he knew OpenSSH was around and didn't make an effort to enforce the trademark, which leads to some worry about whether or not he was seriously protecting it. (If you don't seriously protect a trademark, you can lose it.)
The OpenSSH versus SSH dispute is much blurrier; there's easy ways to look at it from either side. As much as I hate having to rename a project, however, I don't think anyone can legitimately claim that Listar has a leg to stand on if we wanted to dispute ListSTAR's trademark.
Besides, I'm looking on the bright side as far as Listar is concerned. When I originally spoke to StarNINE, one thing I had promised was not to port to the platforms they ran on, to avoid confusion. If Listar changes its name... hey, I'm sure the Macintosh community wouldn't mind a freely available OpenSource mailing list package. ;)
--Sparks
Neither I nor any other member of the Listar project holds ill-will against MCF for enforcing the trademark. The whole story is simply this:
When I started writing Listar, it was a replacement for Majordomo specifically for my own machines. I called it 'Listar', the Spanish word for 'list'. It wasn't until a year later that 'ListSTAR' came to my attention, since, well, I don't use Macintoshes. I contacted StarNINE, then the owners of the package, and was told 'ListSTAR is defunct and no longer sold or supported, plus you're under UNIX and we're under Macintosh. Don't stress it.' So, perhaps unwisely, I didn't.
Fast-forward two years, to when a company named MCF Software bought ListSTAR from the remains of StarNINE. The product is now revived and thus no longer defunct, and Listar (which can run on the FreeBSD-based MacOS X, where ListSTAR does not) is suddenly both a threat to the trademark and a potential source of confusion. Faroukh Irani of MCF contacted the Listar project politely about the name change and didn't get lawyers involved at all. He handled it very nicely, and should be commended for that. Nor is he in the wrong to enforce his trademark; this wasn't a case of 'the little guy' getting stomped on, this was a case of an unfortunate case where the situation changed and not to the benefit of the Open Source project.
That said, we have gone and picked another (not yet announced) name, and we want to trademark that to prevent future confusion. Our problem is that in looking into that, we've found that it is very hard to trademark something - enforcably - which is not used in commercial trade.
People say 'Linux is trademarked by Torvalds', but that's not entirely true. From what I've found in my poking around, SSC (who publish Linux Journal) and RedHat - both of whom use 'Linux' in commercial trade - obtained the trademark on behalf of Torvalds.
It seems like trademark law is biased against free and open projects, probably largely due to ignorance and outdated laws. The question here is simply... has anyone ever really looked into trademarking an OpenSource project in an enforcable way?
I have no problem with changing the name of this mailing list package now, over the ListSTAR dispute, but I have a great deal of trouble with the idea that I could have the name stolen out from under me again in another three years if someone decides they like it for their own commercial project. Hence the desire to obtain a legal trademark on it. :)
--Sparks