8 ms·

The project might need to change name; it seems like it may be violating the Git trademark rules[1]: > Portmanteaus ("GitFoo" or "FooGit") are out. Most of the

by mrmr1993 8y ago

The project might need to change name; it seems like it may be violating the Git trademark rules[1]: > Portmanteaus ("GitFoo" or "FooGit") are out. Most of the cases run into this rule. For instance, we asked GitHub to not to use "DGit" to refer to their replicated Git solution, and they[1] rebranded. We also asked "GitTorrent" not to use that name based on this rule. [1]: https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw@sigill.intra.peff.net/ https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

Arkanosis 8y ago
That's a good point. This has been discussed as well for the renaming of Microsoft's GVFS. GitPub is still very young, and it might end up supporting (D)VCS other than git, so absolutely nothing in it is definitive right now, not even the name.
tomxor 8y ago
Why does "GitPub" violate git trademark names but "GitHub" and "GitLab" not? If it's only portmanteaus specifically then... why, (that seems weird), and i'm sure I can find an arbitrary lab and hub name to violate them.
- anonymouz 8y ago
  From mrmr1993's link: > The USPTO initially rejected our application as confusingly similar to the existing trademark on GitHub, which was filed in 2008. While one might imagine where the "Git" in GitHub comes from, by the time we applied to the USPTO, both marks had been widely used in parallel for years. So we worked out an agreement with GitHub which basically says "we are mutually OK with the other trademark existing". > (There was another delay caused by a competing application from a proprietary version control company that wanted to re-brand portions of their system as "GitFocused" (not the real name, but similar in spirit). We argued our right to the name and refused to settle; they eventually withdrew their application). > So GitHub is essentially outside the scope of the trademark policy, due to the history. We also decided to explicitly grandfather some major projects that were using similar portmanteaus, but which had generally been good citizens of the Git ecosystem (building on Git in a useful way, not breaking compatibility). Those include GitLab, JGit, libgit2, and some others. The reasoning was generally that it would be a big pain for those projects, which have established their own brands, to have to switch names. It's hard to hold them responsible for picking a name that violated a policy that didn't yet exist.
  - tomxor 8y ago
    wow... reading the git trademark policy now, it's... surprising: > While the original idea was to prevent people from forking the software, breaking compatibility, and still calling it Git, the policy covers several other cases. > One is that you can't imply successorship. So you also can't fork the software, call it "Git++", and then tell everybody your implementation is the next big thing. This seems like a massive violation of the spirit of GPL... explicitly disallowing official endorsement is one thing (since that would be lying), but you shouldn't be able to stop someone going and doing their own thing and calling it git-something.
    - roblabla 8y ago
      The GPL says nothing about branding though. The GPL is about user freedom, the ability to let the user improve (and share improved version of) the software. In general, people tend to confuse copyright/patent with branding. The former is about using, while the later is about naming. You can totally make the next git-killer, and base it on git. What you cannot do is name it "GitSomething" (regardless of whether it uses git behind the scenes), as that would be a trademark violation. I personally think the policy makes sense, but I also understand that there might be reasonable arguments either side. But framing it as an "anti-GPL" thing seems disingenuous to me.
      - tomxor 8y ago
        > The GPL says nothing about branding though I said in spirit, not literally. > In general, people tend to confuse copyright/patent with branding I understand how trademark laws work, I'm talking about why this policy is wrong and against how OSS projects work in general. The original purpose (as stated by the policy itself) was supposedly to protect confusing forks of the same name or prevent pseudo successors, but it goes way beyond this to attack anything with git in the name. > For example, imagine a software project which is only tangentially related to Git. It might use Git as a side effect, or might just be "Git-like" in the sense of being a distributed system with chained hashes. Let's say as an example that it does backups. We'd prefer it not call itself GitBackups. We don't endorse it, and it's just using the name to imply association that isn't there. You can come up with similar hypotheticals: GitMail that stores mailing list archives in Git, or GitWiki that uses Git as a backing store. They reason this issue as "endorsement"... yet it's so common to have an ecosystem around a popular piece of software where project names are a derivative of the name of the core software it builds upon, I doubt anyone ever got confused or even cared much about endorsement, instead I think enforcement of this policy will just make the relationship and purpose of software built for use with git more opaque to users.
- mrmr1993 8y ago
  That's essentially a historical accident. From the same email[1]: > The USPTO initially rejected our application as confusingly similar to the existing trademark on GitHub, which was filed in 2008. While one might imagine where the "Git" in GitHub comes from, by the time we applied to the USPTO, both marks had been widely used in parallel for years. So we worked out an agreement with GitHub which basically says "we are mutually OK with the other trademark existing". > GitHub is essentially outside the scope of the trademark policy, due to the history. We also decided to explicitly grandfather some major projects that were using similar portmanteaus, but which had generally been good citizens of the Git ecosystem (building on Git in a useful way, not breaking compatibility). Those include GitLab, JGit, libgit2, and some others. The reasoning was generally that it would be a big pain for those projects, which have established their own brands, to have to switch names. It's hard to hold them responsible for picking a name that violated a policy that didn't yet exist. There's also some further discussion about how it probably gives them an unfair advantage, but that's the policy they've chosen to persue regardless. [1]: https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw@sigill.intra.peff.net/ https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...
heavenlyblue 8y ago
What about GitKraken? I don’t think they’re large enough yet but it seems they would need to change their name.
- mrmr1993 8y ago
  They'll be in the same situation. It might be worth shooting them an email with a link to the official policy (https://git-scm.com/about/trademark https://git-scm.com/about/trademark) to give them a heads-up.
yookoala 8y ago
Thanks a lot. We're discussing on changing name. We will not use the name in our final release. Please allow us to temporary attach to the name until we have a new one. https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/git-federation/2018-06/msg00117.html https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/git-federation/2018-06/msg...

Arkanosis 8y ago

That's a good point. This has been discussed as well for the renaming of Microsoft's GVFS. GitPub is still very young, and it might end up supporting (D)VCS other than git, so absolutely nothing in it is definitive right now, not even the name.

tomxor 8y ago

Why does "GitPub" violate git trademark names but "GitHub" and "GitLab" not? If it's only portmanteaus specifically then... why, (that seems weird), and i'm sure I can find an arbitrary lab and hub name to violate them.

anonymouz 8y ago
From mrmr1993's link: > The USPTO initially rejected our application as confusingly similar to the existing trademark on GitHub, which was filed in 2008. While one might imagine where the "Git" in GitHub comes from, by the time we applied to the USPTO, both marks had been widely used in parallel for years. So we worked out an agreement with GitHub which basically says "we are mutually OK with the other trademark existing". > (There was another delay caused by a competing application from a proprietary version control company that wanted to re-brand portions of their system as "GitFocused" (not the real name, but similar in spirit). We argued our right to the name and refused to settle; they eventually withdrew their application). > So GitHub is essentially outside the scope of the trademark policy, due to the history. We also decided to explicitly grandfather some major projects that were using similar portmanteaus, but which had generally been good citizens of the Git ecosystem (building on Git in a useful way, not breaking compatibility). Those include GitLab, JGit, libgit2, and some others. The reasoning was generally that it would be a big pain for those projects, which have established their own brands, to have to switch names. It's hard to hold them responsible for picking a name that violated a policy that didn't yet exist.
- tomxor 8y ago
  wow... reading the git trademark policy now, it's... surprising: > While the original idea was to prevent people from forking the software, breaking compatibility, and still calling it Git, the policy covers several other cases. > One is that you can't imply successorship. So you also can't fork the software, call it "Git++", and then tell everybody your implementation is the next big thing. This seems like a massive violation of the spirit of GPL... explicitly disallowing official endorsement is one thing (since that would be lying), but you shouldn't be able to stop someone going and doing their own thing and calling it git-something.
  - roblabla 8y ago
    The GPL says nothing about branding though. The GPL is about user freedom, the ability to let the user improve (and share improved version of) the software. In general, people tend to confuse copyright/patent with branding. The former is about using, while the later is about naming. You can totally make the next git-killer, and base it on git. What you cannot do is name it "GitSomething" (regardless of whether it uses git behind the scenes), as that would be a trademark violation. I personally think the policy makes sense, but I also understand that there might be reasonable arguments either side. But framing it as an "anti-GPL" thing seems disingenuous to me.
    - tomxor 8y ago
      > The GPL says nothing about branding though I said in spirit, not literally. > In general, people tend to confuse copyright/patent with branding I understand how trademark laws work, I'm talking about why this policy is wrong and against how OSS projects work in general. The original purpose (as stated by the policy itself) was supposedly to protect confusing forks of the same name or prevent pseudo successors, but it goes way beyond this to attack anything with git in the name. > For example, imagine a software project which is only tangentially related to Git. It might use Git as a side effect, or might just be "Git-like" in the sense of being a distributed system with chained hashes. Let's say as an example that it does backups. We'd prefer it not call itself GitBackups. We don't endorse it, and it's just using the name to imply association that isn't there. You can come up with similar hypotheticals: GitMail that stores mailing list archives in Git, or GitWiki that uses Git as a backing store. They reason this issue as "endorsement"... yet it's so common to have an ecosystem around a popular piece of software where project names are a derivative of the name of the core software it builds upon, I doubt anyone ever got confused or even cared much about endorsement, instead I think enforcement of this policy will just make the relationship and purpose of software built for use with git more opaque to users.
mrmr1993 8y ago
That's essentially a historical accident. From the same email[1]: > The USPTO initially rejected our application as confusingly similar to the existing trademark on GitHub, which was filed in 2008. While one might imagine where the "Git" in GitHub comes from, by the time we applied to the USPTO, both marks had been widely used in parallel for years. So we worked out an agreement with GitHub which basically says "we are mutually OK with the other trademark existing". > GitHub is essentially outside the scope of the trademark policy, due to the history. We also decided to explicitly grandfather some major projects that were using similar portmanteaus, but which had generally been good citizens of the Git ecosystem (building on Git in a useful way, not breaking compatibility). Those include GitLab, JGit, libgit2, and some others. The reasoning was generally that it would be a big pain for those projects, which have established their own brands, to have to switch names. It's hard to hold them responsible for picking a name that violated a policy that didn't yet exist. There's also some further discussion about how it probably gives them an unfair advantage, but that's the policy they've chosen to persue regardless. [1]: https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw@sigill.intra.peff.net/ https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

heavenlyblue 8y ago

What about GitKraken? I don’t think they’re large enough yet but it seems they would need to change their name.

mrmr1993 8y ago
They'll be in the same situation. It might be worth shooting them an email with a link to the official policy (https://git-scm.com/about/trademark https://git-scm.com/about/trademark) to give them a heads-up.

yookoala 8y ago

Thanks a lot. We're discussing on changing name. We will not use the name in our final release. Please allow us to temporary attach to the name until we have a new one. https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/git-federation/2018-06/msg00117.html https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/git-federation/2018-06/msg...