[zeromq-dev] Trademark policy for 0MQ

[Pieter Hintjens]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Daisuke Maki <lestrrat at gmail.com> wrote:

> I understand that you need to set the rules, so I'm not against the trademark
> stuff in principle, but I'm a bit upset at how this came about to be -

It came to be because Sustrik asked me to write a policy on Tuesday,
I'm acting on that.

> Especially the fact that I was pretty much just told to change the
> name of the Perl binding without any forewarning.

How would you prefer this dialog to happen? I made an issue on your
issue tracker asking (not telling) you to choose a name that's more
consistent with other bindings. The confusion that calling a product
"zeromq" creates is real.

My own C binding was forcefully renamed to "czmq" for consistency,
after Mato pointed out that the previous name wasn't good. This is how
it goes.

> Also, I think the wording on the trademark page looks hostile. That's
> part why I'm being pissy -  I felt like I was threatened.

Understandable, and sorry about that, it's not the intention. The page
is a placeholder for what emerges from this discussion.

> Now having expressed my pissy reaction, let me try to be a bit more
> constructive...

For sure. Your "wtf" reaction is fair enough, but let's assume good
will on all sides, it makes things easier.

> If you insist on the package changing its name, fine.
> The owners have the final say, so I'll comply.

I don't insist. We discussed this at the meeting on Tuesday and there
was consensus that binding names should be consistent and that calling
them "zeromq" was misleading. We also noted that Perl modules call
themselves after the products they package. So there's obviously some
thinking to do here.

> I really don't have a good candidate for zeromq. Net::ZeroMQ? Yeah,
> sure it's network related, but it feels weird. ZeroMQ is ZeroMQ...
> that's why the previous owner ( who started the perl binding ) named
> it so.

Perhaps someone else will propose a name. My own goal here is to write
down whatever bylaws we come up with.

>   * I understand you need to have a guideline.

It's really not about iMatix's commercial interests but about what
policy we (as a community) frame for the defining marks we use. The
policy has to be stated by the trademark owner, which is why I put
that text on www.imatix.com, but the contents of that policy should
come from this discussion. Send me changes to the text as you like.

>   * The wording on that trademark page looks very hostile.
>     Can you please adjust the wording on that trademark page so that
> it's more relaxed?

It's by necessity a contract. Otherwise it's pointless. It's aimed at
people who might, for example, fork ZeroMQ, change it dramatically,
and then redistribute the results as "ZeroMQ".

> An please next time, send me a friendly warning before filing an issue?

Well, if you go naively as I did to the binding page and try to
contact the project maintainer, you end up at the issue tracker. You
may want to fix that.

Sorry if the end results seemed unfriendly or hostile, that was not my
intention.

> I'm usually not this pissy, and I usually just comply with such
> guidelines (I'm an obedient Japanese guy, remember?)

Pissy is fine. Let's make this work.

-Pieter