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This is an issue we have also, where we took our time to offer an official mirror of our software on Github, so we are less "popular" there than outdated clones

by xgbi 11y ago

This is an issue we have also, where we took our time to offer an official mirror of our software on Github, so we are less "popular" there than outdated clones. This is a problem because many people will clone the old (2+years!) but popular repo and see that it does not work as well as it should. Github offers no real solution here. Maybe they should put a badge or an option to tag a repo as "official" (with sufficient proof of the owner) and present on top of search results.. although the possibilities of abuse are endless. You will have to work your way up the search page with friends starring you. Maybe put up a blog asking your users to do so?

ryandrake 11y ago
Being able to identify the "official" project on GitHub is often tough, especially for projects with hundreds of active forks, none of them with any discernible merge-back pattern. Not sure if it's a great solution to allow a single use the ability to "own" a project name though. You can imagine it resulting in some of the problems associated with domain naming: name squatting and legal fights over trademarks.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  Not sure if it's a great solution to allow a single use the ability to "own" a project name though. You can imagine it resulting in some of the problems associated with domain naming: name squatting and legal fights over trademarks. Arguably the name of a project is a trademark, and no one has permission to use it unless you grant them that permission. Just because you license the copyright to your code under an OSS or Free Software license, does not automatically entail granting a license to the trademark on the name. IMO, this is one thing that makes Github a bit of a legal tar-pit... it's trivially easy to fork a repo, but nothing makes (or even encourages) you to change the name, or make it clear that your repo isn't the "official" Project Foobar. So far it seems that most people just take a "don't ask, don't tell, don't care" sort of approach to that, but I have a hunch it's going to get somebody burned eventually.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    I've not heard of a open source software license that requires you to change the name of a piece of software when you re-distribute it, but with the thousands of licenses out there, there are probably a few with this requirement. Surely the major ones (GPL, BSD, MIT, etc.) don't require this.
    - mindcrime 11y ago
      I've not heard of a open source software license that requires you to change the name of a piece of software when you re-distribute it, but with the thousands of licenses out there They don't, and they wouldn't. The licenses (generally) are only dealing with the code, which is something very specific, and is apart from the name of the software. The need to change the name would simply fall out of the way trademark law works, not a requirement in the license per-se. It's just an issue that doesn't come up very often, because most people who write OSS don't seem to get very worked up over it. But a license permitting you to redistribute code, does not automatically mean you have permission to use the associated trademark. Times when this has come up: CentOS can't call their Linux distribution "RHEL" because RHEL is a Red Hat trademark. But they can (and do) redistribute the code. Firefox / IceWeasel controversy - Firefox have specific guidelines concerning use of the name "Firefox" and Debian ran afoul of them at some point, and the Firefox people made an issue of it, so Debian rebranded their distribution of that code as "IceWeasel". And so on... Now, IANAL, and I'll freely admit that it's probably an open question whether or not simply forking a Github repo represents an action which would violate a trademark. I suspect it could if the owner chose to make an issue of it, but hey, I could be wrong.

by xgbi 11y ago

ryandrake 11y ago

Being able to identify the "official" project on GitHub is often tough, especially for projects with hundreds of active forks, none of them with any discernible merge-back pattern. Not sure if it's a great solution to allow a single use the ability to "own" a project name though. You can imagine it resulting in some of the problems associated with domain naming: name squatting and legal fights over trademarks.

mindcrime 11y ago
Not sure if it's a great solution to allow a single use the ability to "own" a project name though. You can imagine it resulting in some of the problems associated with domain naming: name squatting and legal fights over trademarks. Arguably the name of a project is a trademark, and no one has permission to use it unless you grant them that permission. Just because you license the copyright to your code under an OSS or Free Software license, does not automatically entail granting a license to the trademark on the name. IMO, this is one thing that makes Github a bit of a legal tar-pit... it's trivially easy to fork a repo, but nothing makes (or even encourages) you to change the name, or make it clear that your repo isn't the "official" Project Foobar. So far it seems that most people just take a "don't ask, don't tell, don't care" sort of approach to that, but I have a hunch it's going to get somebody burned eventually.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  I've not heard of a open source software license that requires you to change the name of a piece of software when you re-distribute it, but with the thousands of licenses out there, there are probably a few with this requirement. Surely the major ones (GPL, BSD, MIT, etc.) don't require this.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    I've not heard of a open source software license that requires you to change the name of a piece of software when you re-distribute it, but with the thousands of licenses out there They don't, and they wouldn't. The licenses (generally) are only dealing with the code, which is something very specific, and is apart from the name of the software. The need to change the name would simply fall out of the way trademark law works, not a requirement in the license per-se. It's just an issue that doesn't come up very often, because most people who write OSS don't seem to get very worked up over it. But a license permitting you to redistribute code, does not automatically mean you have permission to use the associated trademark. Times when this has come up: CentOS can't call their Linux distribution "RHEL" because RHEL is a Red Hat trademark. But they can (and do) redistribute the code. Firefox / IceWeasel controversy - Firefox have specific guidelines concerning use of the name "Firefox" and Debian ran afoul of them at some point, and the Firefox people made an issue of it, so Debian rebranded their distribution of that code as "IceWeasel". And so on... Now, IANAL, and I'll freely admit that it's probably an open question whether or not simply forking a Github repo represents an action which would violate a trademark. I suspect it could if the owner chose to make an issue of it, but hey, I could be wrong.