MJ Ray a écrit :
So I don't think Kohala could own the TM, no.
Surely it *could* own it, but we might disagree on whether it's a better holder than BibLibre or not?
Technically speaking it could, yes, it could. But it would be much much worst than BibLibre trademark ! (and <paranoid mode ON> much easier to harm everybody than BibLibre trademark !<paranoid mode OFF>) So it's definetly BibLibre that is the best holder atm ! With all due respect, I think we might have fallen into some binary thinking here. I think there might be two fallacies at play here. 1) That unless trademarked, the Koha name would be in danger. I think that this whole trademark situation might have been avoided entirely by specifically rolling the name and icon in the GPL. 2) That the only good steward is a corporation. At any point, did anyone consider having a Library serve as steward? It seems to me that a Library would have a good interest in ensuring that access to the name were wide and not anticompetitive. I am very uneasy with a single set of hands, even Paul's, holding these when they have a direct financial interest in *not* distributing rights. Cheers, Brooke
2009/5/21 BWS Johnson <mhelman@illinoisalumni.org>:
MJ Ray a écrit :
So I don't think Kohala could own the TM, no.
Surely it *could* own it, but we might disagree on whether it's a better holder than BibLibre or not?
Technically speaking it could, yes, it could. But it would be much much worst than BibLibre trademark ! (and <paranoid mode ON> much easier to harm everybody than BibLibre trademark !<paranoid mode OFF>) So it's definetly BibLibre that is the best holder atm !
With all due respect, I think we might have fallen into some binary thinking here. I think there might be two fallacies at play here. 1) That unless trademarked, the Koha name would be in danger. I think that this whole trademark situation might have been avoided entirely by specifically rolling the name and icon in the GPL. Trademark != Copyright
GPL is for Copyright only, and has no bearing whatsoever on Trademarks. 2) That the only good steward is a
corporation. At any point, did anyone consider having a Library serve as steward? It seems to me that a Library would have a good interest in ensuring that access to the name were wide and not anticompetitive. I am very uneasy with a single set of hands, even Paul's, holding these when they have a direct financial interest in *not* distributing rights. This is a load of hooey. You only have Koha because of corporations--a corporation recommended that Koha be released under the GPL (Katipo) and did the work to make that happen initially in 2000. To date, over 95% of the codebase, documentation and community infrastructure has been contributed to the project by corporations.
I am really sick of this anti-corporate attitude, it threatens to undermine the very organizations that are bringing you Koha! Some of us work for companies, others for libraries, can the ones working for libraries please stop attacking the ones working for companies? Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE CEO migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf@liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
participants (2)
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BWS Johnson -
Joshua Ferraro