Re: "Open Source" trademark consultation

On Fri, Feb 26, 1999 at 10:11:16AM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen wrote:
> I have seen no responses made public yet, nor any statement from SPI
> regarding the "Open Source" trademark situation, nor any indication if (and
> if so, how) the trademark situation is affected by Bruce Perens' statement
> regarding his resignation from OSI (widely publicised and discussed in free
> software news media, e.g.
> http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/18/0927202.shtml), in which he accuses
> OSI (and Eric Raymond in particular) of having lost the free software focus,
> and hints at unconscionable abuse of the Open Source mark.
>
> The opensource.org domain still has "Software in the Public Interest" as its
> registrant, and http://www.spi-inc.org/trademarks still says "The Open
> Source trademark is managed by Eric Raymond on behalf of the free software
> community". However, http://www.opensource.org/osi-launch.html still claims
> SPI transfered the "Open Source" mark to Eric Raymond and that OSI's
> "mission will be to own and defend the Open Source trademark, [...]".
>
> In short, the "Open Source" trademark situation is still a mess, and there's
> a distinct possibility of it getting even messier, and I've seen no signs of
> activity by SPI to untangle this mess since the announcement I quoted
> earlier.
>
> Needless to say, I find this extremely disappointing. I can only express my
> (unfortunately increasingly dwindling) hope that SPI will act now, and act
> in an open fashion to resolve this issue.

Agree, agree, agree, in general.

Having been subscribed to the SPI board list for some time I think the
problems center around:

- The board being generally too busy with personal matters to draft or
decide action on the mark.

- A general hesitance to piss ESR or OSI in general off.

I think that getting more people involved would help raise confidence
in taking independant action and would create more calories of human
energy to attack these problems with.

--
___________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler As above
Novare International Inc. so below
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