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They could and should provide a community trademark that people can use. Like the logo with a [Community] badge across it. Imagine how different this letter wo

They could and should provide a community trademark that people can use. Like the logo with a [Community] badge across it. Imagine how different this letter would look like. "Here is the community logo you can use and here is the license that allows you to use it. Only rule is: don't try to act like you are us. Thanks for increasing the value of the product by providing content."

NetBeck 6y ago
Here is an example of Arduino's community logo: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Trademark/CommunityLogo https://www.arduino.cc/en/Trademark/CommunityLogo
- code_scrapping 6y ago
  That's a wonderful way of supporting people while also taking care of brand, styling recommendations etc. Kudos to Arduino! Maybe RPi just hired some <profanity-word> lawyers that need to justify their salaries by doing same-old, before somebody in the top level wakes up and goes "maybe that's not the best way of doing things"?
  - navaati 6y ago
    And bingo, that's exactly what happened (seeing RPi Foundation's answer). Sigh, what a world...
  - mbanzi 6y ago
    Thanks for the Kudos (Arduino co-founder here). Most likely they used an external service, which uses an algorithm to decide if a TM is used in the correct way or not. So the so called <profanity-word> lawyer was misguided by the work of a software engineer... anyway.. Let's not imply that all decisions are malicous and all lawyers are evil. The reality is that people make mistakes all day every day, imagine algorithms..:)
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      So, I hired a thug to beat you up, but the instructions I gave them were based on an algorithm, so everything's cool! See, I'm not a crappy violent offender, it was just people I hired and an algorithm. This is not a valid moral defence.
    - code_scrapping 6y ago
      > Thanks for the Kudos You're welcome and you deserve it! > Let's not imply that all decisions are malicous and all lawyers are evil. I'm really not. But I can imagine that if you're a professional versed in blindly protecting IP - this is what you would do. The decision to do it in that specific way (suing infringement left and right) needs to come from the top and typically is not a decision that a lawyer would make alone. So, 3 scenarios: 1) this is an unsupervised default action of a lawyer that's just applying the law without guidance from management, because that's what they expect that they should be doing. 2) management approves of this and they're short-sighted thinking that the logo IP is more important than the community 3) management decided that they'll make a business move that requires stronger branding and purposefully want to kill the community to monopolize the support. In case 1 and 2, we can hope that this will be corrected. I really don't like case 3, but again - I was never a very good business-person. EDIT: Wow, so it was No.2. Glad to see the feedback loop working. But as pointed out by others on this thread - it's not that RPi should not protect themselves and their trademark - it's that they can do it in a better way than sending take-down orders.
- pabs3 6y ago
  Debian's trademark license is fairly sensible too: https://www.debian.org/trademark https://www.debian.org/trademark
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    They do have > You cannot use Debian trademarks in a company or organization name or as the name of a product or service. > You cannot use Debian trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent.

NetBeck 6y ago

Here is an example of Arduino's community logo: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Trademark/CommunityLogo https://www.arduino.cc/en/Trademark/CommunityLogo

code_scrapping 6y ago
That's a wonderful way of supporting people while also taking care of brand, styling recommendations etc. Kudos to Arduino! Maybe RPi just hired some <profanity-word> lawyers that need to justify their salaries by doing same-old, before somebody in the top level wakes up and goes "maybe that's not the best way of doing things"?
- navaati 6y ago
  And bingo, that's exactly what happened (seeing RPi Foundation's answer). Sigh, what a world...
- mbanzi 6y ago
  Thanks for the Kudos (Arduino co-founder here). Most likely they used an external service, which uses an algorithm to decide if a TM is used in the correct way or not. So the so called <profanity-word> lawyer was misguided by the work of a software engineer... anyway.. Let's not imply that all decisions are malicous and all lawyers are evil. The reality is that people make mistakes all day every day, imagine algorithms..:)
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    So, I hired a thug to beat you up, but the instructions I gave them were based on an algorithm, so everything's cool! See, I'm not a crappy violent offender, it was just people I hired and an algorithm. This is not a valid moral defence.
  - code_scrapping 6y ago
    > Thanks for the Kudos You're welcome and you deserve it! > Let's not imply that all decisions are malicous and all lawyers are evil. I'm really not. But I can imagine that if you're a professional versed in blindly protecting IP - this is what you would do. The decision to do it in that specific way (suing infringement left and right) needs to come from the top and typically is not a decision that a lawyer would make alone. So, 3 scenarios: 1) this is an unsupervised default action of a lawyer that's just applying the law without guidance from management, because that's what they expect that they should be doing. 2) management approves of this and they're short-sighted thinking that the logo IP is more important than the community 3) management decided that they'll make a business move that requires stronger branding and purposefully want to kill the community to monopolize the support. In case 1 and 2, we can hope that this will be corrected. I really don't like case 3, but again - I was never a very good business-person. EDIT: Wow, so it was No.2. Glad to see the feedback loop working. But as pointed out by others on this thread - it's not that RPi should not protect themselves and their trademark - it's that they can do it in a better way than sending take-down orders.
pabs3 6y ago
Debian's trademark license is fairly sensible too: https://www.debian.org/trademark https://www.debian.org/trademark
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  They do have > You cannot use Debian trademarks in a company or organization name or as the name of a product or service. > You cannot use Debian trademarks in a domain name, with or without commercial intent.