From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Sep 10 19:33:30 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD05714F00 for ; Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:33:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from localhost (jkh@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA17368; Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:33:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Brett Glass Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Investors are getting concerned In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:00:08 MDT." <4.2.0.58.19990910185453.04482720@localhost> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:33:30 -0700 Message-ID: <17364.937017210@localhost> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > We need to talk. The investors are leaning very strongly in favor of using > OpenBSD rather than FreeBSD for the project ever since they found out that > the trademark "FreeBSD" is registered to Walnut Creek CDROM! They fear that They should have figured that out a lot earlier than now - it's been a matter of public record since the beginning, as Terry Lambert has just demonstrated in his own posting, and ignorance of the US Tradmark and Patent office website (or telephone inquiries number) is no excuse, especially if you're supposedly dealing with real businessmen. And while it hasn't exactly been trumpeted from the treetops, it hasn't been a secret either (how can it, trademark registrations are public record!) and quite a few others have discovered this for themselves over the years and asked me in private email just what the deal was. I've told them all the same thing: Walnut Creek CDROM's ex-VP registered it on our behalf quite some time back, back when we couldn't even afford the filing fees ourselves, and transferring it to FreeBSD, Inc. control has been a matter of laxity in filing the paperwork (and paying Walnut Creek CDROM back their registration fees, to keep it honest and straight-forward all around), not some Machiavellian plot to hijack the FreeBSD project name and sell our technology to Libya. If I haven't exactly been shouting about the trademark ownership issue either, it's because if I did and people started really itching over it, I'd have to go through the whole paperwork thing Right That Minute(tm) and I've been kinda too busy lately to go and deliberately invent a new and immediate crisis to deal with. I agree that it needs to be done, and I talked to Walnut Creek CDROM about this just a couple of weeks ago ("We should do that soon." "Yeah. Soon."), we've just been too busy stomping out larger and more important fires recently to sit down with the lawyer. I'm also not particularly worried (and never have been) over the issue since even if Walnut Creek CDROM did suddenly turn to the dark side and attempt a trademark coup d'etat before I got around to signing the forms and the check, we in core would simply stick our tongues out at them and change the project's name to something cool, like "ServerForce", also making several legions of current and future marketing people deleriously happy at the same time (I'm just kidding about "ServerForce" though). We hold all the cards here, and if they want to shoot their golden goose through the head then they can get fussy over the trademark. We know it, they know it, and Bob has said several times that he doesn't even *want* to own the trademark since it leaves the company open to accusations of potential piracy on the high seas just like this. Bob and I are both just paperwork shy and that's never been a crime, even when you've got Brett Glass having kittens over the issue. Which brings us to the second point, which is what the owners of the trademark would do, be it Walnut Creek CDROM OR FreeBSD, Inc., if you came out with the Evil Brett Distribution and called it FreeBSD. Maybe if you called it FreeEBD, that would be a different enough (though still damn confusing) that we wouldn't whine, but we'd certainly send you a cease-and-desist notice for using the FreeBSD name for Evil purposes and that's going to remain true no matter who owns the mark. You've also already had numerous examples of FreeBSD derived products cited in this mailing list, none of which anyone has gone after for being evil, and if you can't derive a reasonable distinction between good and evil from that then there's not much more information I or anyone else could give you which would be of much help. I've already said it once during this increasingly pointless thread and I'll say it just once more: We, the FreeBSD project members and the custodians of the trademark, have no beef with anyone who does good things and doesn't sully our good name. You'd have to sink pretty low before that would happen, but I can't say it's inconceivable and you'll just have to accept that as an operating condition. Nobody is going to give you carte blanche to do whatever the heck you feel like doing under the FreeBSD banner. If you want to do Evil, call it something else. Call it GlassOS. :) Finally, as far as who the FreeBSD project decides to acknowledge on its web pages and in its documentation is concerned, being listed there is a privilege rather than a right (BSD copyright or not) and the project has always reserved the right to be nice to its friends. Gosh, welcome to reality! I'm sorry it's such a shock to your system. :-) Walnut Creek CDROM has given the project a tremendous amount in terms of resources (and I'm not just talking about the release engineer's salary, that's probably the smallest part) and anyone who's spent any time around the project knows that. It's only right that we give them the acknowledgement they deserve and also to maybe try and see that their CD prodect makes money since a portion of that money always flows through to supporting us. It's no more than enlightened self-interest to do so. The other *BSDs support themselves through CD sales and this is no different except that we have a buffer layer to take care of the messy logistics of actually having to promote and sell CDs into channels. We sometimes write code for money too, if you want to know an even more shameful secret. :) And yeah, it's still a level playing field in that if some other group decides to play sugar daddy to the project at a level which meets or exceeds the committment that Walnut Creek CDROM has shown (and that's admittedly a lot) then I'm sure the project would give their CD product or whatever it was equal billing in their documentation and word-of-mouth advertising. It's a direct investment-to-benefit ratio at work here and to even have to explain the obvious like this to you seems like an activity which is beneath both of us. If your mystery investors actually DO all these wonderful things for the project then they'll get the project's gratitude in all the appropriate ways. If they try to do it harm, they'll feel its teeth. These rules apply to everyone and have always applied, right up to and including Walnut Creek CDROM. What you seem to be asking for here, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is some sort of special credit towards doing good works before any of those good works are actually done, and frankly it's both this attitude and the involvement of a principal who has always seemed far more hostile to the project than kind which makes me very disinclined to grant any such credit. If anything, we're starting from a position of deep demerit and it makes me wonder if your investors wouldn't be better off in finding someone else to spearhead the relationship with their BSD-in-waiting, whichever of the two options they might pick. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message