"Open Source" trademark consultation
According to http://www.spi-inc.org/news/1998/19981124 :
>The consultation period will end at midnight at the end of the calendar
>year 1998, UTC. All consultation responses will be made public by SPI after
>the consultation period has closed, unless the respondent specifically
>requests otherwise.
I have seen no responses made public yet, nor any statement from SPI
regarding the "Open Source" trademark situation, nor any indication if (and
if so, how) the trademark situation is affected by Bruce Perens' statement
regarding his resignation from OSI (widely publicised and discussed in free
software news media, e.g.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/18/0927202.shtml), in which he accuses
OSI (and Eric Raymond in particular) of having lost the free software focus,
and hints at unconscionable abuse of the Open Source mark.
The opensource.org domain still has "Software in the Public Interest" as its
registrant, and http://www.spi-inc.org/trademarks still says "The Open
Source trademark is managed by Eric Raymond on behalf of the free software
community". However, http://www.opensource.org/osi-launch.html still claims
SPI transfered the "Open Source" mark to Eric Raymond and that OSI's
"mission will be to own and defend the Open Source trademark, [...]".
In short, the "Open Source" trademark situation is still a mess, and there's
a distinct possibility of it getting even messier, and I've seen no signs of
activity by SPI to untangle this mess since the announcement I quoted
earlier.
Needless to say, I find this extremely disappointing. I can only express my
(unfortunately increasingly dwindling) hope that SPI will act now, and act
in an open fashion to resolve this issue.
Ray
--
Tevens ben ik van mening dat Nederland overdekt dient te worden.
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