Re: Libapache-mod-backhand: load balancing Apache requests.
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, David Starner wrote:
> Why are you worried? Trademark law seems fairly simple (for laws), and
> "open source" doesn't seem to make a difference here. It's just "We
> have this trademark, registered on the 31 of February 2002, they're
> using it without permission, and they ignored the a cease-and-disest
> we sent them." Unless you've let others use the trademark in defiance
> of your license (which worries me about Linux(tm)), it should be
> a simple case.
I'm worried because trademark law requires you to vigilantly protect the
mark; if you show arbitrary application, by allowing someone to use your
name without permission, then you might lose when trying to prevent
someone else from using it. Watching how trademark law is playing out in
the domain name disputes, it's becoming all too clear that it's usually
the company with the most money to throw at lawyers who wins the cases.
Linux is a good example - I know Linus had sent nastygrams to at least one
party and got it settled out of court, but if, say, LinuxOne had IPO'd and
Linus tried to use his ownership of the mark to force them to change their
name, and put it before a judge, I'm not sure Linus would have won,
because there are so many other parties using the Linux mark.
This may all be paranoia, and indeed, sentiment in the ASF is starting to
run towards punting this to trademark law so we can make the Apache
license GPL-compatible.
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Richard Braakman wrote:
> > Yes, I'm not thinking of a compatibility test suite. I'm thinking of
> > things like "All modifications must be clearly itemized in a file called
> > MODIFICATIONS at the root level" and "The place to report errors or bugs
> > must not be an apache.org address, and must be clearly indicated in the
> > README or end-user docs", stuff like that. Stuff that addresses the few
> > sources of pain it causes us when people release broken packages.
>
> This sounds like a good solution to me. It would even be nicer than
> most licenses that require that sort of thing, because the requirements
> go away if the software is renamed. That way it stays easy to share
> code between free software projects.
>
> It's not going to stop FooCorp from releasing "ApachePro", though.
Right, *if* they follow the terms of that document. So carefully
constructing that list of requirements is somewhat important.
Brian
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