4 ms·

Living with the Rust Trademark

2 points by jwilk 4y ago

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
Huge quote to give context: >> The GCC project is not shipping a modified version of rustc; instead, this project has recently approved a plan to merge an independently implemented compiler front-end for the Rust language. By Leighton's interpretation of the trademark policy, the GCC Rust compiler cannot actually be called a Rust compiler. Should this interpretation hold, GCC could end up claiming to compile a language called something like "Gust" or "Oxide" instead. >> Mark Wielaard responded, though, that the concern was overwrought: >> That looks to me as an overreaching interpretation of how to interpret a trademark. I notice you are the bug reporter. It would only apply if a product based on gcc with the gccrs frontend integrated would claim to be endorsed by the Rust Foundation by using the Rust wordmark. Just using the word rust doesn't trigger confusion about that. And trademarks don't apply when using common words to implement an interface or command line tool for compatibility with a programming language. He also pointed out that the one-time GCC Java implementation never ran afoul of the Java trademark. >> Unsurprisingly at this point, Leighton disagreed: "sorry, Mark, you're still misunderstanding, on multiple levels and in so many ways i am having a hard time tracking them all". The conversation did not improve from there until David Edelsohn said (in an apparently private message quoted by Leighton) that the issues raised would be given "due consideration" and that any problem found would be addressed. That, evidently, was the wording that Leighton wanted to hear. >> In the short term, there is probably little danger of a "Gust" solution; as was pointed out in the discussion, the Rust Foundation has long been aware of the GCC work and has never raised any concerns about it. That could change at some future point, though, especially if the GCC Rust compiler implements a different version of the language, perhaps with extensions that have not been approved for official Rust™. >> If GCC Rust were to be successful enough to cause the Rust Foundation to fear loss of control over the language, the results could be bad for everybody involved. It will take some time before GCC Rust can catch up to rustc, though, if it ever does, so this is not an immediate concern. =================== The Rust language needs a standard and soon. If Rust is not standardized, it is only a matter of time before it is forked and fragmented. If GCC Rust becomes Gust or something else, the different name would likely accelerate forking ("it's not called Rust, so it can do things differently than Rust"). The other risk for forking is that a large corporation using Rust wants changes that the current implementors disagree with. Facebook / Meta did this with PHP to create Hack (https://hacklang.org/ https://hacklang.org/). If something similar happened it could seriously undermine Rust.

2 points by jwilk 4y ago

Huge quote to give context: >> The GCC project is not shipping a modified version of rustc; instead, this project has recently approved a plan to merge an independently implemented compiler front-end for the Rust language. By Leighton's interpretation of the trademark policy, the GCC Rust compiler cannot actually be called a Rust compiler. Should this interpretation hold, GCC could end up claiming to compile a language called something like "Gust" or "Oxide" instead. >> Mark Wielaard responded, though, that the concern was overwrought: >> That looks to me as an overreaching interpretation of how to interpret a trademark. I notice you are the bug reporter. It would only apply if a product based on gcc with the gccrs frontend integrated would claim to be endorsed by the Rust Foundation by using the Rust wordmark. Just using the word rust doesn't trigger confusion about that. And trademarks don't apply when using common words to implement an interface or command line tool for compatibility with a programming language. He also pointed out that the one-time GCC Java implementation never ran afoul of the Java trademark. >> Unsurprisingly at this point, Leighton disagreed: "sorry, Mark, you're still misunderstanding, on multiple levels and in so many ways i am having a hard time tracking them all". The conversation did not improve from there until David Edelsohn said (in an apparently private message quoted by Leighton) that the issues raised would be given "due consideration" and that any problem found would be addressed. That, evidently, was the wording that Leighton wanted to hear. >> In the short term, there is probably little danger of a "Gust" solution; as was pointed out in the discussion, the Rust Foundation has long been aware of the GCC work and has never raised any concerns about it. That could change at some future point, though, especially if the GCC Rust compiler implements a different version of the language, perhaps with extensions that have not been approved for official Rust™. >> If GCC Rust were to be successful enough to cause the Rust Foundation to fear loss of control over the language, the results could be bad for everybody involved. It will take some time before GCC Rust can catch up to rustc, though, if it ever does, so this is not an immediate concern. =================== The Rust language needs a standard and soon. If Rust is not standardized, it is only a matter of time before it is forked and fragmented. If GCC Rust becomes Gust or something else, the different name would likely accelerate forking ("it's not called Rust, so it can do things differently than Rust"). The other risk for forking is that a large corporation using Rust wants changes that the current implementors disagree with. Facebook / Meta did this with PHP to create Hack (https://hacklang.org/ https://hacklang.org/). If something similar happened it could seriously undermine Rust.