[Koha] Koha Trademarks

[Joshua Ferraro]

2009/5/21 BWS Johnson <mhelman at 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,

-- 
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