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I'm unsure why the author is upset about being unable to fork and still calling it Rust. That feels perfectly reasonable: They're the ones that get to call it R

by yuliyp 2y ago

I'm unsure why the author is upset about being unable to fork and still calling it Rust. That feels perfectly reasonable: They're the ones that get to call it Rust. The copyright license still lets you hack on it and distribute the results as you'd like, but if you distribute it and call it Rust that's gonna cause confusion, so they don't blanket allow that.

shortrounddev2 2y ago
It feels that the name of a language should not be something you can trademark, only implementations of it. I.e: Nobody should own "C", but microsoft can own MSVC.
- rectang 2y ago
  That's the difference between an independent language standard with multiple implementations (the old way), and a language with a single canonical implementation (more typical these days).
- glopes 2y ago
  Trademarking language names is not allowed since a language is not considered a good but rather a standard, however what is being trademarked here is the software product which is the compiler of Rust. It just so happens that the language and the compiler software are called the same thing.
  - shortrounddev2 2y ago
    That's just trademarking a language with extra steps
Niksko 2y ago
My read was they meant a fork as in a GitHub repository fork, used to fix bugs and then submit them to upstream. This isn't a fork of the language, it's a mechanism to enable collaboration. However 'to the casual observer' could be taken to mean 'someone who doesn't understand that GitHub forks are not language forks' and they'd end up in strife. Seems like a reasonable objection to me based on the letter of the law.
- nindalf 2y ago
  Your assumption is reasonable, but the author clarified on reddit that they had a much more expansive definition in mind. They want more than what is explicitly granted by the MIT License (the right to "deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software"). They want the right to fork, call their fork Rust and compete with the main repo for users. When asked how having multiple competing repos all claiming to be Rust would be beneficial to the Rust community they had nothing to say.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    > When asked how having multiple competing repos all claiming to be Rust would be beneficial to the Rust community they had nothing to say Being able to call the commands of a fork rustc, cargo etc would allow trivial drop-in replacement in case the official toolchain takes a bad turn (for example with analytics). Furthermore, being able to use Rust in your fork's name (e.g. g-b-Rust) makes discovering better forks a lot easier, as opposed to the names insanity with Firefox derivatives There's just little benefit for the public in this Mozilla's fixation with trademarks, open source thrived for decades without it (I know that Rust is not in Mozilla anymore, but the legal culture evidently persisted)
rectang 2y ago
Who's the intended audience for your Github fork? Is there any likelihood of marketplace confusion? If you're just forking a repo on Github and upstreaming patches, then the likelihood of confusion is minute. Github's users know what a fork means, and if they're the only audience, there's no problem. If you break the upstreaming link, distribute release packages, market to non-Github-users, and so on, then the likelihood of confusion grows. At some point, a court would probably assess that trademark violation had occurred.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
Typically language developers make a pretty strong distinction between the compiler/runtime and the language specification itself, as is the case for C - or even C#, despite some usual Microsoft shittiness. The Rust Foundation says "modified version of the programming language, compiler, or the Cargo package manager," seeming to cover source-based forks from rustc and reimplementations of Rust that do things a bit differently. This really is overly restrictive compared to most other programming languages. You can create "Jim's Java Interpreter" or "Sarah's WASM-extended C# compiler" which use custom modifications of these languages, without asking permission from Sun or Microsoft; but the Rust Foundation seems to forbid this sort of thing. (Maybe I am misreading something but this has been my understanding for a while.) Rust appears to be using trademark claims in lieu of a formal specification, which is how C# protects its integrity against modifications. It is heavy-handed and seems intended to let the Rust Foundation hold an unusual amount of power over the language itself, and not just their implementation. To be clear I believe they have good intentions: they think the book is a good enough specification and they don't want Rust to be sabotaged by bad ideas. But it's an unusual and somewhat untested arrangement: the Rust Foundation's general insistence that Rust = rustc + cargo + authorized backends like GCC seems like a significant technical risk that has gone badly underdiscussed. Too much of the community sneers at the idea of formal specification, but there is no magic spell that guarantees good management in perpetuity at any single organization. Obviously specification has its own problems and risks. But I think the issue has drawn a lot of snitty fights and bad-faith blogs - mostly Rust critics, to be fair - and very little serious discussion.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  "Jim's Rust Compiler" would be OK under the policy. Jim calling his fork "The Rust Compiler" wouldn't. You're allowed to use "Rust" or "Cargo" to mention the language & package manager, you're not allowed to cause confusion that they're the official Rust Foundation-endorsed compiler & package manager.

by yuliyp 2y ago

shortrounddev2 2y ago

It feels that the name of a language should not be something you can trademark, only implementations of it. I.e: Nobody should own "C", but microsoft can own MSVC.

rectang 2y ago
That's the difference between an independent language standard with multiple implementations (the old way), and a language with a single canonical implementation (more typical these days).
glopes 2y ago
Trademarking language names is not allowed since a language is not considered a good but rather a standard, however what is being trademarked here is the software product which is the compiler of Rust. It just so happens that the language and the compiler software are called the same thing.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  That's just trademarking a language with extra steps

Niksko 2y ago

My read was they meant a fork as in a GitHub repository fork, used to fix bugs and then submit them to upstream. This isn't a fork of the language, it's a mechanism to enable collaboration. However 'to the casual observer' could be taken to mean 'someone who doesn't understand that GitHub forks are not language forks' and they'd end up in strife. Seems like a reasonable objection to me based on the letter of the law.

nindalf 2y ago
Your assumption is reasonable, but the author clarified on reddit that they had a much more expansive definition in mind. They want more than what is explicitly granted by the MIT License (the right to "deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software"). They want the right to fork, call their fork Rust and compete with the main repo for users. When asked how having multiple competing repos all claiming to be Rust would be beneficial to the Rust community they had nothing to say.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  > When asked how having multiple competing repos all claiming to be Rust would be beneficial to the Rust community they had nothing to say Being able to call the commands of a fork rustc, cargo etc would allow trivial drop-in replacement in case the official toolchain takes a bad turn (for example with analytics). Furthermore, being able to use Rust in your fork's name (e.g. g-b-Rust) makes discovering better forks a lot easier, as opposed to the names insanity with Firefox derivatives There's just little benefit for the public in this Mozilla's fixation with trademarks, open source thrived for decades without it (I know that Rust is not in Mozilla anymore, but the legal culture evidently persisted)

rectang 2y ago

Who's the intended audience for your Github fork? Is there any likelihood of marketplace confusion? If you're just forking a repo on Github and upstreaming patches, then the likelihood of confusion is minute. Github's users know what a fork means, and if they're the only audience, there's no problem. If you break the upstreaming link, distribute release packages, market to non-Github-users, and so on, then the likelihood of confusion grows. At some point, a court would probably assess that trademark violation had occurred.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago

Typically language developers make a pretty strong distinction between the compiler/runtime and the language specification itself, as is the case for C - or even C#, despite some usual Microsoft shittiness. The Rust Foundation says "modified version of the programming language, compiler, or the Cargo package manager," seeming to cover source-based forks from rustc and reimplementations of Rust that do things a bit differently. This really is overly restrictive compared to most other programming languages. You can create "Jim's Java Interpreter" or "Sarah's WASM-extended C# compiler" which use custom modifications of these languages, without asking permission from Sun or Microsoft; but the Rust Foundation seems to forbid this sort of thing. (Maybe I am misreading something but this has been my understanding for a while.) Rust appears to be using trademark claims in lieu of a formal specification, which is how C# protects its integrity against modifications. It is heavy-handed and seems intended to let the Rust Foundation hold an unusual amount of power over the language itself, and not just their implementation. To be clear I believe they have good intentions: they think the book is a good enough specification and they don't want Rust to be sabotaged by bad ideas. But it's an unusual and somewhat untested arrangement: the Rust Foundation's general insistence that Rust = rustc + cargo + authorized backends like GCC seems like a significant technical risk that has gone badly underdiscussed. Too much of the community sneers at the idea of formal specification, but there is no magic spell that guarantees good management in perpetuity at any single organization. Obviously specification has its own problems and risks. But I think the issue has drawn a lot of snitty fights and bad-faith blogs - mostly Rust critics, to be fair - and very little serious discussion.

SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
"Jim's Rust Compiler" would be OK under the policy. Jim calling his fork "The Rust Compiler" wouldn't. You're allowed to use "Rust" or "Cargo" to mention the language & package manager, you're not allowed to cause confusion that they're the official Rust Foundation-endorsed compiler & package manager.