Sunday April 08, 2007 links for 2007-04-08
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I fear the dragon is asleep on its loot rather than dead. But I think Firefox and Google have indeed changed the game.
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"Either IBM *wants* to keep the GPL and AL incompatible, doesn't care, or Bob isn't paying attention. Which is it?" Third option: since they don't use the GPL for anything, maybe they just don't care & this is a hollow me-too.
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"In this talk, I explain why smaller software-focused businesses will soon be deserting Apache- and BSD-style permissive licenses for GPL[2 3] and their successors." Interestingly he doesn't mention MPL/CDDL/weak-copyleft.
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An argument from the forthcoming geek remake of "Life of Brian"
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Microsoft copying Linux again.
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"The [RIAA] asked that any owner of a copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret be able to use pretexting" OK, this comment is my copyright, so I get to be exempt from the law too, right?
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It's sad to see, but it's the inevitable consequence of trademark law in the US and many other places. In this case it's more complicated than usual, but the golden rule for FOSS naming remains: pick a name unrelated to any trademark.
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Best of luck, Marc, looking forward to meeting you.
Posted by webmink
( Apr 08 2007, 02:22:28 AM PDT )
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Er, AIM wasn't trademarked when they picked the name 'gaim'. :)
Posted by Andrew Sidwell on April 08, 2007 at 04:46 AM PDT #
Andrew: Yes, I'm aware of that (I hinted by saying "it's more complicated than usual but there's only so much you can say in 2 lines of del.icio.us text!) Nonetheless, we have all called AIM by that name for years and years, which is why Mark chose "Gaim", and when the first trademark issue arose it would have been smarter to have picked an unrelated name than to assume that "AIM" would go unprotected for ever too. 50:50 hindsight perhaps, but we all need to learn from it.
In this case the matter was undoubtedly arguable, but time and time again I see geeks frame businesses as "unreasonable" for enforcing trademarks when in fact they have little option. Maybe AOL could have licensed the trademark to them but I guess they needed to be a legal entity first. "Pidgin" is a great name and I think we now need to get behind it in a positive way rather than throw brickbats at AOL. Not that they don't deserve criticism for other aspects of their behaviour, mind you...
Posted by Simon Phipps on April 08, 2007 at 05:06 AM PDT #
Posted by Andrew on April 08, 2007 at 12:57 PM PDT #
Posted by Glyn Normington on April 10, 2007 at 10:41 AM PDT #