[unios] *NEW* Unios ;)

[Pat Wendorf]

Tril wrote:

> 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.

Yep, understood now.  Actually you're right the name is fairly common.  I was more
worried they'd have lawyers e-mail me and tell me to take the page down.  That was my
only real concern.

> 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.

Already done.  :)

> > 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.

In the about, it sounded like they were a commercial OS development (they had
marketing managers, and such, kinda imply's something).  But you are right, they are
not commercial.

> 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.

I'm not sure they'd want that.  Their OS is already done, and it works perfectly (no
bugs or anything).

> * Change names.

Yep, the name isn't all that important in the long run, just spent a lot of time with
it, I think I just grew attached.  :)

> * Ignore the clash and simply make it clear they are different UniOSes.

Will do.

> 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?

They are not a *real* OS project yet, nor are they commercial yet.  Their current OS
is a boot loader that displays the message "SCSI Device not found"...  hehe

They were a joke, and their whole purpose was to get beta testers and such to
download their boot disk demo and then their tech support would get them to try all
sorts of things to get it working.. hehehe

They didn't really do a decent search on the name, so didn't think it would cause any
problems.  We're all happy now, and they sure got a jolt out of my mail, so UniOS is
safe, thanks to:

Beholder, the gulable UniOS guy ;)