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LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System
- empath75 7y agoI'm amazed they got as far as building a website without considering that they can't use a trademarked name like that.
- treve 7y agoWouldn't this be a copyright infringement?
- EgoIncarnate 7y agoTrademark infringement. They could argue it is a different category than the toy company, but I think that line of argument is already lost given they are using LEGO style bricks on the website.
- Supermancho 7y ago> They could argue it is a different category than the toy company, but I think that line of argument is already lost given they are using LEGO style bricks on the website It helps that it is a different product. They could put down Pikachu iconography and that doesn't make the product similar to Pikachu. All colored bricks are not (yet) under Mattel's control. I think there's wiggle room.
- PeterisP 7y agoLEGO trademark registration https://trademarks.justia.com/745/93/lego-74593028.html https://trademarks.justia.com/745/93/lego-74593028.html registers the trademarks also in all the major categories where software can fall in, and so it's upon LegoOS to demonstrate that there's no way that an uninformed consumer might confuse and think that they're related (which is IMHO impossible, given a single look at their homepage). It also explictly lists that the trademark is used (among other things) for educational computer programs, computer accessories, entertainment services in the nature of providing facilities for playing computer games, conducting workshops for instruction in the use of computer software, etc - and that's true, I personally know a bunch of software products with the LEGO™ brand. As the trademark is both used and registered not only for plastic bricks but also in the field of software, naming a product LegoOS by itself would invite a trademark claim, and putting a red brick (that's not registered, but definitely does create an association for the average consumer, which matters very much in trademark claims) on the homepage just removes any maneuvering space; IMHO it'd be a slam-dunk guaranteed immediate injunction if LEGO sends a C&D that gets contested. And the practice of trademark law means that they pretty much must sent a C&D, not doing so would be quite bad for them.
- oscargrouch 7y agoIts funny when you think about whats fair in this kind of stuff. For example if you use AppleSomething, apple is a fruit, was a famous record label before being a famous computing brand. As theres a fruit before anything else, you can argue why you could have some rights over the brand. If is AppleOS of course you can have trouble because Apple the IT company have a OS and they might argue this is a common way people refer to iOS or MacOS. But Lego is a whole different category. There is no well known concept of Lego before Lego was created, and theres a sort of mechanics and way of thinking that is totally associated with the idea of Lego because of the Lego toy. So if you use Lego in that sense even if its for something else, they might reclaim the concepts name, because they actually invented not just a toy, but a toy with a concept of composability for which people might be inclined to reuse the name, not because of the toy, but the larger concept the toy represents.
- joombaga 7y agoFrom https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/legal/assets/blt1a4c9a959ce8e1cb/FairPlayBrochure.pdf https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/legal/assets/blt1a4c9a959ce8e1cb... > The LEGO trademark is considered > a famous trademark in a number of > jurisdictions. In some indicated in a > registration certificate or included on a > list of famous trademarks, but most often > confirmed through decisions rendered > in specific cases. It means that the > LEGO trademark has the widest possible > protection, i.e. for all goods and services, > and that we should be able to prevent > others from using the LEGO trademark, > not just for toys, but for any goods.
- folkhack 7y agoIncoming DCMA takedown notice in 3... 2.... (seriously though, Lego is famous for being bulldogs in regards to their trademark/brand!)
- mortenjorck 7y agoAs DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trademarks are outside its scope. There have actually been successful counterclaims under section 512(f) against companies using the DMCA to police trademark infringement. All that said, an old-fashioned cease and desist letter from Lego is most certainly incoming.
- folkhack 7y agoAh - TIL ... thanks for a solid response =) Either way - I'd avoid using someone's brand unless it was changed up in a MAJOR way.
- amyjess 7y agoHonestly, I would rather get an email from my hosting company saying my project has been taken down after receiving a DMCA notice than get a visit from a process server saying that a huge corporation has filed a suit against me. Not having a DMCA for trademark means that the process server is very, very likely to knock on your door for naming something after Lego.
- mortenjorck 7y agoFortunately, it’s highly unlikely you’d be the target of a suit right off the bat. A cease-and-desist is just a warning that, should you continue what the sender considers to be infringing, they intend to file a suit.
- WilliamEdward 7y agoIn what way is this "bulldog" behaviour? Not letting people use your distinctive brand name and trademarks in their commercial website is mild brand protection at best. Super obvious.
- heavyset_go 7y agoLEGO have a very friendly[1] explanation that they must pursue legal action to protect their trademark internationally. They have rules about using their trademark in names, logos, websites and URLs. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-play https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...
- grawprog 7y agoI think they broke just about every single one of LEGO®'s rules in the trademark section.
- GuB-42 7y agoWhen I first read LegoOS, I thought it was an OS made by Lego. I wouldn't be unreasonable considering that they have a software platform with the Mindstorm line. The fact that confusion is possible goes against the spirit of the trademark law.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoAnd here I thought it was a spin on that elf in LTOR.
- milofeynman 7y agoThank you for citing this. LEGO is notorious for protecting their trademark. It was a really silly name to use and they will definitely get a C&D quickly.
- empath75 7y agoSo, actually reading the paper. What it appears that they are doing is blowing up the concept of a 'server' entirely, and replacing the system bus with network. So you can have a bunch of 'servers' racked together which create a pool of cpus, ram, storage, and so on, all of which are connected by the network. And then they pull from this pool of resources to create vNodes which are like virtual machines. I like the idea. It'll be interesting to see it develop. It could be the core of the next ec2, or I guess it could be nothing.
- na85 7y ago> What it appears that they are doing is blowing up the concept of a 'server' entirely, and replacing the system bus with network. So you can have a bunch of 'servers' racked together which create a pool of cpus, ram, storage, and so on, all of which are connected by the network. And then they pull from this pool of resources to create vNodes which are like virtual machines. Sounds to me a lot like a Beowulf cluster, is it not?
- crtlaltdel 7y agowow! blast from the past! last time i setup a b/w cluster was as an experiment some 12-14 years ago! I was thinking this sounds like how DCOS presents resources; buckets of cpu, ram, disc, etc.
- core-questions 7y agoI don't see any hot grits, or anything about Natalie Portman, so there's no way it's a Beowulf cluster.
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- rmah 7y agoSounds sort of like what AT&T did with Plan 9 back in the day.
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- crankylinuxuser 7y agoAlternate names: BlocksOS, DistrOS, DistribOS,BuildOS I'd suggest cloning the repo locally, as when this gets TOS'd for obvious trademark issue, Github's deletion won't hit your local machine (but will also nuke forks on GH). Cool project, poor choice in name.
- mirekrusin 7y agolegOS could potentially pass.
- jolmg 7y agoBrickOS At least, that's what SE calls them for their site bricks.stackexchange.com.
- ansible 7y agoAs others have mentioned, BrickOS already exists as alternate LEGO Mindstorms software.
- mondoshawan 7y agoI don't see how this is any different compared to Beowulf, Mosix, Amoeba and other mass-machine boundary-eliminating systems that were attempted back in the 90s. Am I missing something that makes this better suited to the task of resource utilization across nodes?
- vimota 7y agoThe Morning Paper (by Adrian Colyer) does a great summary of the paper: https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/10/22/legoos-a-disseminated-distributed-os-for-hardware-resource-disaggregation/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/10/22/legoos-a-disseminated-di...
- theincredulousk 7y agoSupports Infiniband out of the box - neat!
- rkagerer 7y agoYeah! Sounds like it fits in well with their approach: The initial implementation focuses on process, memory, and storage monitors communicating via a customised RDMA-based network stack. Also offers low latency which would be key for a distributed system like this. I've made use of a lot of older-gen Infiniband gear off eBay (was cheaper than 10GigE, more performant) and love it.
- ASalazarMX 7y agoImagine if they get a C&D from Lego, and they rename it to BrickOS[1]. 1. http://brickos.sourceforge.net/ http://brickos.sourceforge.net/
- pjmlp 7y agoSo nothing related to the actual legOS for Lego Mindstorms. https://sourceforge.net/projects/legos/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/legos/
- wjsetzer 7y agoThat would be my first idea for a new name. With that project being last updated in 2004, I'm sure they would be fine.
- Alupis 7y agoI initially thought this had something to do with the "leJOS" JVM for Lego Mindstorms[1][2]. What's the use case for a distributed operating system? HPC? Or is it just for resilience? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeJOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeJOS [2] http://www.lejos.org/ http://www.lejos.org/
- als0 7y agoPrevious discussion from a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488292
- Already__Taken 7y agoI can't remember the name of the company but this sounds like a level down from what a "hosting" provider was working on with Eve Online to demo dynamically provisioning compute for the universe in blocks whose size adapts to the population.
- Lastweek 7y agoHi one of the paper authors here. Most of the discussions here center around the legal concern rather than the project itself. We are working on that. But for now we decide to take down the website first. Sorry for the inconvenience folks and thank you all for the input.
- mbreese 7y agoGiven that they took down their site... in case anyone is interested in the actual project (and not the trademark issues with the name) -- here are some links: https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi18/presentation/shan https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi18/presentation/shan https://github.com/Wuklab/LegoOS https://github.com/Wuklab/LegoOS
- topkai22 7y agoMaybe Mega Blocks will give them a license to use their mark :)
- AlexDragusin 7y agoThe page seems to be down already. https://youtu.be/NeKXvINnk04?t=129 https://youtu.be/NeKXvINnk04?t=129