[unios] *NEW* Unios ;)

[Tril]

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Beholder wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, you wrote:
> 
> > Copyrighting is not the right term, you can't copyright a word.  You must
> > have meant trademarked.
> 
> I was told that if you put the word copyright on your page, it's name and
> content are "owned".  I added a "Copyright UniOS Group" to the main page,
> ensureing this.

The content is owned, but not the name.  Copyrighting your page is
protection for people mirroring your page without your permission.  If you
were to sue someone for trademark infringement you would have to show that
you were using the name before they were.  But I'm not sure you can even
do that if you aren't using the name in "trade"- i.e. to make money
yourself.

If it's not too late, it's a good idea to try to establish friendly
contact with the unios.org group and work things out. 

> > Where does it say it is not open source?  Maybe you assumed it because
> > there wasn't any source linked on the page?
> 
> I've not seen many commercial ventures that choose opensource as the model of
> development.  They are commercial, and thus very likely to not be opensource. 
> Not that it matters either way.  They are using the name for commercial
> purposes, which irks me.  

I didn't see any mention of that either.

> I imagine in your case, something like Microsoft Tunes (all the ideas of
> tunes at $950 copy + $150 per machine that connects to it) would probably irk
> you, and fare a bit.  Especially if they "borrowed" the ideas and then applied
> some sweeping IP on them, then told you, that you couldn't use the names or the
> ideas unless you paid them.
> 
> Maybe it's jumping the gun, but I felt this should be dealt with sooner than
> later (later as in, when they have a real product and their laywers e-mail and
> tell us we can't use the name anymore).

* Try to convince them to join your project instead.
* Change names.
* Ignore the clash and simply make it clear they are different UniOSes.
Sounds silly, right?  There's only supposed to be ONE.  I bet there's more
than just two.  It's a pretty common name.
* Pay them some amount to get the domain from them.  But if they are
commercial- why aren't they using UNIOS.COM??  Anyone know the actual
restrictions on .org domains?

For tunes we already have tunes.org and it's a common english word so
trademark is not likely to hold up.  "Open Source" didn't.

David Manifold <dem@tunes.org>
This message is placed in the public domain.