6 ms·

Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

373 points by ciconia 1y ago

mijoharas 1y ago
Interesting. > I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project. As all of this was happening I had wondered if there was going to be some kind of copyright dispute, but I guess it's gonna be trademark based. Does anyone have any insights into how this might play out? How do trademark disputes tend to happen? (I assume this is in the US?)
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  After fifteen years of not enforcing the trademark, a common legal interpretation in case of a conflict would be to consider the trademark genericized or abandoned. Which means any trademark owners apparently were not interested in enforcing their trademarks and effectively abandoned their rights. Of course this is not guaranteed and just a common interpretation of trademark law by judges in trademark related cases. In case of conflicts, the trademark owner would be unlikely to win for this reason if a defendent can argue that the trademark was abandoned for years. Oracle is in the same boat with Javascript. Technically they own the trademark. But world+dog has been using that trademark freely without them doing anything about it. So, their claims to the trademark are weak at this point. Hence the recent articles about e.g. Deno wanting to challenge their ownership of that trademark. And you are right to call out the jurisdiction. Because interpretations and laws vary between countries and even between states inside the US. This stuff is complicated.
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    There's a reasonable argument that the trademark hasn't been generalized or abandoned. There's not other project out there using the RubyGems trademark (as far as I know). As such, OP has a decent argument that there were no previous violations in need of enforcement. Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired. The community isn’t a legal entity. Saying that it’s owned by a public community with no boundaries or membership is equivalent to saying it’s genericized or abandoned. Even if it was, that would undermine this trademark registration which was registered by a single individual.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        that wouldn't matter though, would it? a genericized trademark is not the problem. the problem is ruby central wanting to take control of the name/trademark. if they want the trademark now, they now have to fight, and if in that fight, it is established that nobody gets to own the trademark, then the current trademark registration would have achieved its goal.
        Aurornis 1y ago
        If nobody owns the trademark then they're free to use it. The person who wrote this post tried to register the trademark to prevent them from using it. If the trademark is determined to be abandoned and generic then they cannot stop Ruby Central from using it.
        em-bee 1y ago
        but ruby central using the trademark is not the problem. as long as everyone else can use it too. but ruby central wants to prevent everyone else to use it, and that's the problem. if the trademark is determined to be generic, then ruby central can not prevent anyone from using it. the goal is not to stop ruby central from using the trademark. the goal is to stop them from claiming ownership.
        queenkjuul 1y ago
        I think the point is to prevent Ruby Central from owning it, not using it
      - 1y ago
  - bdcravens 1y ago
    Further complicating the issue is that for as long as I can remember, the two organizations have been kind of comingled at Ruby conferences, taking money. You want a Bundler sticker? Go to the Ruby Central table. You want a Bundler t-shirt? They'll happily sell you one for a donation. IANAL, but there has to be some nuance to "ownership" based on how it's presented to those who didn't read the fine print.
  - petercooper 1y ago
    Oracle is in the same boat with Javascript. Technically they own the trademark. But world+dog has been using that trademark freely without them doing anything about it. So, their claims to the trademark are weak at this point. And, yet, it seems to still be difficult to do anything about it, with Deno now raising $200k to fight it. Ultimately, someone still needs deep enough pockets to push the point even if the legal point seems straightforward.
  - skywhopper 1y ago
    There can only be “nonenforcement” if there was someone using the “Bundler” name without permission that went ignored. You can’t enforce something that isn’t being violated. And unless I missed something, that never happened until RubyCentral pulled this takeover.
  - wgjordan 1y ago
    My (not-a-lawyer) understanding is that a trademark is 'genericized' only when it's become so ubiquitous that its public use no longer refers to a single, unique source or origin of product, but to an entire generic class of products: escalator, granola, trampoline are some older examples of 'genericized' trademarks. In this case, 'Bundler' still refers pretty clearly to a single brand-name utility within the Ruby ecosystem. However, the goods/services in the trademark registration application [1] covers "Downloadable computer software for managing, processing, optimizing, and organizing source code and dependencies", which is a broader class of services. The descriptive word "bundler" is quite widely used in the JavaScript ecosystem, for example, to describe this general type of dependency-management software (esbuild calls itself "An extremely fast bundler for the web", for example). I could certainly see the "Bundler" trademark being contested as a descriptive mark that hasn't acquired significant secondary meaning in that broader context, so it will be interesting to see whether this trademark application is upheld upon review (or potential opposition). [1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99407082&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99407082&caseSearchType=U...
sevg 1y ago
I appreciated the tone of this post. Not breathlessly inflammatory. Not longer than it needed to be. Just context, facts and actions.
- draw_down 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - spillguard 1y ago
    From the guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
devinprater 1y ago
Careful or the big companies will copyright and trademark "Ruby Community", and it'll belong to them.
colinbartlett 1y ago
Has there been any attempt from Ruby Central to undo the damage they caused? Can anyone comment on the current state of affairs?
- jmuguy 1y ago
  Still waiting for them to reschedule the Zoom call they were going to do with the community.... something tells me we'll be waiting for a while.
  - ciconia 1y ago
    Maybe they're waiting till after Yom Kippur? ;-)
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    This makes sense, since there won’t be a community left to have a call with if they don’t get their shit together.
- eowyn 1y ago
  I think this was the last statement from Ruby Central: https://youtu.be/VyCiE3GjQps?si=QgY1sa_w-59jJjQ3 https://youtu.be/VyCiE3GjQps?si=QgY1sa_w-59jJjQ3 This topic seems to be in a holding pattern now. People are waiting to see how Ruby Central responds. Some are hoping for the Q&A to be rescheduled or at least another statement
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    In this, the year of someone's lord 2025, surely there's a non-video version, right?
    - geerlingguy 1y ago
      Probably on Discord.
    - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
khy 1y ago
> back when “Carlhuda” was a super-prolific author of Ruby libraries, including most of the work to modularize Rails for version 3 Wow, hadn't thought about that in a while. For a laugh, go back and take a look at some of the architectural choices they were replacing.
- emmanueloga_ 1y ago
  I haven't used ruby in more than a decade, but I remember there was always some controversy around the corner. Up next: Zed Shaw comes out from his cave, joins forces with the mummy of _why to combat DHH's anti-woke agenda.
Aurornis 1y ago
> I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project. Can someone familiar with trademark law comment on this? If I understand this post correctly, there was a merger between Ruby Together and Ruby Central at some point in the past. The combined organization was paying for some combination of developer time and server costs for the project. Can an individual member of this merger actually go register the trademark for the project name and claim that it belongs only to them after merging the organizations and working on the project together, including financial contributions? Is this a loophole situation where neglecting to register a trademark for the group organization left an opening for someone (who is a member of the combined organization) to come in and scoop the trademark registration for themself later? After a decade of the word being used generically by the community, can anyone suddenly trademark it and claim it wasn’t a generic term at this point? Have I misunderstood something about the order of events or nature of the merger?
- ericholscher 1y ago
  Seems like this is the reply you wanted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372303
testdelacc1 1y ago
I sympathise with the author, I really do. He’s obviously put in 15 years of work on this, and he’s engaging in a thoughtful, kind manner. The action on the trademark he’s taking is measured, and necessary. But I don’t know if I agree with the title. It says bundler belongs to the ruby community. It should, certainly. But right now it belongs to the rich people who fund the work on Ruby and Rails. That’s DHH and Lutke (Shopify CEO). Whether the community wrests control from them remains to be seen.
- hn8726 1y ago
  > But right now it belongs to the rich people who fund the work on Ruby and Rails. That’s DHH and Lutke (Shopify CEO). Do you mean "right now" as in _now that they hijacked the Github repositories and locked out the previous owners_, or "right now" as in _for some time now, since they've been funding some Ruby work_?
  - testdelacc1 1y ago
    The latter, they controlled it by funding maintainers. But the extent of their power and their lack of restraint in exercising that power only became clear now. DHH and Lutke don’t have the community’s best interests at heart.
    - joshuap 1y ago
      Funding open source work doesn’t confer ownership, but also “they controlled it by funding maintainers” is not true —- many other companies and individuals from the community helped fund the work through Ruby Together and later Ruby Central.
      - testdelacc1 1y ago
        I believe the events of the last few days speak for themselves. Shopify has exerted absolute control over important Ruby infra. Shopify’s CEO? Lutke. And Board member? DHH.
bdcravens 1y ago
I realize this will come off as snide, and result in downvotes, but looking to the success of Ruby and Rails today, the "community" is as much the money that's been poured into the ecosystem as it is the warm fuzzies and volunteers. Without the millions of dollars companies like Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours, the projects we know and love would be in a much different place. To that end, those entities are as much the "community" as the developer who has done nothing but "gem install" and put cute stickers on their laptop.
- dbalatero 1y ago
  I can't tell what point you're trying to make here?
  - bdcravens 1y ago
    That dismissing the concerns of organizations, big and small, that have contributed to Ruby's success is intellectually dishonest.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - mikeg8 1y ago
      I think you are spot on here, although many may not like to acknowledge it.
    - nyeah 1y ago
      I'm having trouble finding a specific meaning here. Has some concern been dismissed? By who?
    - dbalatero 1y ago
      Which organizations that you mentioned (Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals) have been dismissed? This post seems focused on Ruby Together & Ruby Central and struggles within.
- 1y ago
dvcoolarun 1y ago
RC's funding ( partially from sponsors like Shopify, not just conferences ) was allegedly conditional on this takeover. Arko registered the Bundler trademark to prevent this corporate capture and plans to give it to a new, truly community-governed organization. The biggest risk is the loss of long-time maintainers and a resulting community split/forking of key infra. Total mess.
overgard 1y ago
Weird, seems like a lot of ugly publicity to create more work for themselves. I wonder why Shopify chose to do this.
- lamontcg 1y ago
  DHH got tired of having to argue with the bundler/rubygems community and decided to take it over so everyone working on it, worked for him, and had to take his orders (through his racing buddy, the Shopify CEO).
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related: Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390 Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299170 A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45325792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45325792 I'm leaving Ruby Central https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352432

373 points by ciconia 1y ago

Interesting. > I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project. As all of this was happening I had wondered if there was going to be some kind of copyright dispute, but I guess it's gonna be trademark based. Does anyone have any insights into how this might play out? How do trademark disputes tend to happen? (I assume this is in the US?)

jillesvangurp 1y ago
After fifteen years of not enforcing the trademark, a common legal interpretation in case of a conflict would be to consider the trademark genericized or abandoned. Which means any trademark owners apparently were not interested in enforcing their trademarks and effectively abandoned their rights. Of course this is not guaranteed and just a common interpretation of trademark law by judges in trademark related cases. In case of conflicts, the trademark owner would be unlikely to win for this reason if a defendent can argue that the trademark was abandoned for years. Oracle is in the same boat with Javascript. Technically they own the trademark. But world+dog has been using that trademark freely without them doing anything about it. So, their claims to the trademark are weak at this point. Hence the recent articles about e.g. Deno wanting to challenge their ownership of that trademark. And you are right to call out the jurisdiction. Because interpretations and laws vary between countries and even between states inside the US. This stuff is complicated.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  There's a reasonable argument that the trademark hasn't been generalized or abandoned. There's not other project out there using the RubyGems trademark (as far as I know). As such, OP has a decent argument that there were no previous violations in need of enforcement. Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired. The community isn’t a legal entity. Saying that it’s owned by a public community with no boundaries or membership is equivalent to saying it’s genericized or abandoned. Even if it was, that would undermine this trademark registration which was registered by a single individual.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      that wouldn't matter though, would it? a genericized trademark is not the problem. the problem is ruby central wanting to take control of the name/trademark. if they want the trademark now, they now have to fight, and if in that fight, it is established that nobody gets to own the trademark, then the current trademark registration would have achieved its goal.
      - Aurornis 1y ago
        If nobody owns the trademark then they're free to use it. The person who wrote this post tried to register the trademark to prevent them from using it. If the trademark is determined to be abandoned and generic then they cannot stop Ruby Central from using it.
        em-bee 1y ago
        but ruby central using the trademark is not the problem. as long as everyone else can use it too. but ruby central wants to prevent everyone else to use it, and that's the problem. if the trademark is determined to be generic, then ruby central can not prevent anyone from using it. the goal is not to stop ruby central from using the trademark. the goal is to stop them from claiming ownership.
        queenkjuul 1y ago
        I think the point is to prevent Ruby Central from owning it, not using it
    - 1y ago
- bdcravens 1y ago
  Further complicating the issue is that for as long as I can remember, the two organizations have been kind of comingled at Ruby conferences, taking money. You want a Bundler sticker? Go to the Ruby Central table. You want a Bundler t-shirt? They'll happily sell you one for a donation. IANAL, but there has to be some nuance to "ownership" based on how it's presented to those who didn't read the fine print.
- petercooper 1y ago
  Oracle is in the same boat with Javascript. Technically they own the trademark. But world+dog has been using that trademark freely without them doing anything about it. So, their claims to the trademark are weak at this point. And, yet, it seems to still be difficult to do anything about it, with Deno now raising $200k to fight it. Ultimately, someone still needs deep enough pockets to push the point even if the legal point seems straightforward.
- skywhopper 1y ago
  There can only be “nonenforcement” if there was someone using the “Bundler” name without permission that went ignored. You can’t enforce something that isn’t being violated. And unless I missed something, that never happened until RubyCentral pulled this takeover.
- wgjordan 1y ago
  My (not-a-lawyer) understanding is that a trademark is 'genericized' only when it's become so ubiquitous that its public use no longer refers to a single, unique source or origin of product, but to an entire generic class of products: escalator, granola, trampoline are some older examples of 'genericized' trademarks. In this case, 'Bundler' still refers pretty clearly to a single brand-name utility within the Ruby ecosystem. However, the goods/services in the trademark registration application [1] covers "Downloadable computer software for managing, processing, optimizing, and organizing source code and dependencies", which is a broader class of services. The descriptive word "bundler" is quite widely used in the JavaScript ecosystem, for example, to describe this general type of dependency-management software (esbuild calls itself "An extremely fast bundler for the web", for example). I could certainly see the "Bundler" trademark being contested as a descriptive mark that hasn't acquired significant secondary meaning in that broader context, so it will be interesting to see whether this trademark application is upheld upon review (or potential opposition). [1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99407082&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99407082&caseSearchType=U...

sevg 1y ago

I appreciated the tone of this post. Not breathlessly inflammatory. Not longer than it needed to be. Just context, facts and actions.

draw_down 1y ago
[flagged]
- spillguard 1y ago
  From the guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."

devinprater 1y ago

Careful or the big companies will copyright and trademark "Ruby Community", and it'll belong to them.

colinbartlett 1y ago

Has there been any attempt from Ruby Central to undo the damage they caused? Can anyone comment on the current state of affairs?

jmuguy 1y ago
Still waiting for them to reschedule the Zoom call they were going to do with the community.... something tells me we'll be waiting for a while.
- ciconia 1y ago
  Maybe they're waiting till after Yom Kippur? ;-)
- Aeolun 1y ago
  This makes sense, since there won’t be a community left to have a call with if they don’t get their shit together.
eowyn 1y ago
I think this was the last statement from Ruby Central: https://youtu.be/VyCiE3GjQps?si=QgY1sa_w-59jJjQ3 https://youtu.be/VyCiE3GjQps?si=QgY1sa_w-59jJjQ3 This topic seems to be in a holding pattern now. People are waiting to see how Ruby Central responds. Some are hoping for the Q&A to be rescheduled or at least another statement
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  In this, the year of someone's lord 2025, surely there's a non-video version, right?
  - geerlingguy 1y ago
    Probably on Discord.
  - loloquwowndueo 1y ago

khy 1y ago

> back when “Carlhuda” was a super-prolific author of Ruby libraries, including most of the work to modularize Rails for version 3 Wow, hadn't thought about that in a while. For a laugh, go back and take a look at some of the architectural choices they were replacing.

emmanueloga_ 1y ago
I haven't used ruby in more than a decade, but I remember there was always some controversy around the corner. Up next: Zed Shaw comes out from his cave, joins forces with the mummy of _why to combat DHH's anti-woke agenda.

Aurornis 1y ago

> I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project. Can someone familiar with trademark law comment on this? If I understand this post correctly, there was a merger between Ruby Together and Ruby Central at some point in the past. The combined organization was paying for some combination of developer time and server costs for the project. Can an individual member of this merger actually go register the trademark for the project name and claim that it belongs only to them after merging the organizations and working on the project together, including financial contributions? Is this a loophole situation where neglecting to register a trademark for the group organization left an opening for someone (who is a member of the combined organization) to come in and scoop the trademark registration for themself later? After a decade of the word being used generically by the community, can anyone suddenly trademark it and claim it wasn’t a generic term at this point? Have I misunderstood something about the order of events or nature of the merger?

ericholscher 1y ago
Seems like this is the reply you wanted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372303

testdelacc1 1y ago

I sympathise with the author, I really do. He’s obviously put in 15 years of work on this, and he’s engaging in a thoughtful, kind manner. The action on the trademark he’s taking is measured, and necessary. But I don’t know if I agree with the title. It says bundler belongs to the ruby community. It should, certainly. But right now it belongs to the rich people who fund the work on Ruby and Rails. That’s DHH and Lutke (Shopify CEO). Whether the community wrests control from them remains to be seen.

hn8726 1y ago
> But right now it belongs to the rich people who fund the work on Ruby and Rails. That’s DHH and Lutke (Shopify CEO). Do you mean "right now" as in _now that they hijacked the Github repositories and locked out the previous owners_, or "right now" as in _for some time now, since they've been funding some Ruby work_?
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  The latter, they controlled it by funding maintainers. But the extent of their power and their lack of restraint in exercising that power only became clear now. DHH and Lutke don’t have the community’s best interests at heart.
  - joshuap 1y ago
    Funding open source work doesn’t confer ownership, but also “they controlled it by funding maintainers” is not true —- many other companies and individuals from the community helped fund the work through Ruby Together and later Ruby Central.
    - testdelacc1 1y ago
      I believe the events of the last few days speak for themselves. Shopify has exerted absolute control over important Ruby infra. Shopify’s CEO? Lutke. And Board member? DHH.

bdcravens 1y ago

I realize this will come off as snide, and result in downvotes, but looking to the success of Ruby and Rails today, the "community" is as much the money that's been poured into the ecosystem as it is the warm fuzzies and volunteers. Without the millions of dollars companies like Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours, the projects we know and love would be in a much different place. To that end, those entities are as much the "community" as the developer who has done nothing but "gem install" and put cute stickers on their laptop.

dbalatero 1y ago
I can't tell what point you're trying to make here?
- bdcravens 1y ago
  That dismissing the concerns of organizations, big and small, that have contributed to Ruby's success is intellectually dishonest.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeg8 1y ago
    I think you are spot on here, although many may not like to acknowledge it.
  - nyeah 1y ago
    I'm having trouble finding a specific meaning here. Has some concern been dismissed? By who?
  - dbalatero 1y ago
    Which organizations that you mentioned (Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals) have been dismissed? This post seems focused on Ruby Together & Ruby Central and struggles within.
1y ago

dvcoolarun 1y ago

RC's funding ( partially from sponsors like Shopify, not just conferences ) was allegedly conditional on this takeover. Arko registered the Bundler trademark to prevent this corporate capture and plans to give it to a new, truly community-governed organization. The biggest risk is the loss of long-time maintainers and a resulting community split/forking of key infra. Total mess.

overgard 1y ago

Weird, seems like a lot of ugly publicity to create more work for themselves. I wonder why Shopify chose to do this.

lamontcg 1y ago
DHH got tired of having to argue with the bundler/rubygems community and decided to take it over so everyone working on it, worked for him, and had to take his orders (through his racing buddy, the Shopify CEO).

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related: Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390 Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45299170 A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45325792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45325792 I'm leaving Ruby Central https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352432