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#trademark#name#notepad#code#gpl#linux#don#fork#copyright#project
Discussion (59 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
No one is mad about the port of Notepad++ to macOS. No one is mad that someone said "I ported Notepad++ to macOS." The problem is the branding and delivery conveys the impression that the macOS port is official, which is deceptive even if deception isn't the goal.
Which was why they felt they had to write this post. Read the article.
GPL and other licenses allow you all sorts of leeway with the code but not the name and branding of the product the code is running.
The Notepad++ guy wasn't an attack dog here. I'm 100% behind his reasonable position. Just saying, you're not legally obligated to say "no, no one else in the entire world can use it". It's more that you have to say "no one else can use it without my permission." Also just saying, if you want to use someone else's trademark, it's a really, really bad idea to start the conversation by using it without their permission and thereby requiring them to decide right then and there whether they'll allow you to. It's kind of like asking to borrow someone's car versus taking it first and then asking if that was OK.
I think it's a case of where a lot of people don't have experience with trademark licensing.
Back in the 90s I worked for a small company that was in various "partner" programs with hardware and software companies (Microsoft, Intel, Citrix, etc). Each "partnership" agreement came with trademark licensing documentation and very, very specific usage requirements for using the trademarked name, logos, etc. With at least one of the companies we had to get ad copy approved for compliance with our license.
I’m not sure if Google has ever done similar but people use google as a verb to mean web search and I’m not sure if they worried about losing brand protection or though of it as an advantage in acquiring users.
Is there a clear source for this mechanism?
This issue with Notepad++ isn't even really about trademark, even though that would be the legal means to enforce it. It's more about Criteria #4 of the opensource definition "Integrity of The Author’s Source Code" Which is there so you can't give the original project a bad name while forking it. https://opensource.org/osd
Incidentally, this is why Richard Stallman objects to the term intellectual property. It bundles together three very different areas of property rights (copyright, trademark, and patents) and treats them as sort of a single entity, even though they're really very different, both in their reason for existing and in their mechanisms.
People believe so many dumb things about copyright, trademark, patents, and trade secrets. For example: You don't legally need to use the various symbols for trademarks and copyrights you don't own. Unless there's a contract in force saying you have to, there's no Symbol Police gonna rappel from the skylights and break your keyboard if you say you used a Xerox without the nifty ™ symbol.
Another thing I've seen is the apparent notion that you can "renew" a copyright. Nope, not for a long time now: You get the full term up front with no special action, and once it's done it's gone, unless the law is actually changed in the meantime. Disney didn't "renew" the copyright on "Steamboat Willie" and the dumb live-action remakes aren't being done to "renew" anything, they're just some executive having a brain fart.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5m9grz/theres_no_...
There isn't a clear source (at least that I'm aware of) since this is handled by the legal system with a lot of nuance on a case by case basis. It is very reasonable to be proactive in trademark defense but if you aren't courts may still side with you if the establishment of usage was clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY
Of course I'd prefer for Don Ho to voice his political opinions through more appropriate channels, but it is what it is.
Let's say the IRGC, Mossad or NSA is behind that developer of the Notepad++ on Mac clone and would love to piggyback on your trademark name in order to push a spyware infected app on to some targets. You don't know them and can't trust them so you don't want them using your name because that would backfire on you.
There's plenty of precedent with this in browser extensions, where once they become super popular they end up being sold and bought by some shady Israeli PE or ad-tech company with ties to Mossad. You don't want your name or trademark anywhere near this, if you value it, so you'll have to call out and ban everyone who tries to use it without your explicit permission.
This isn't the developer trying to be a dick to other developers, this is the developer exercising common sense and self preservation.
Personally I think NextPad would’ve been a perfectly acceptable (and subjectively better) name
Redaction should be done by deleting the content from the media AND THEN adding decoration you want to indicate the material was removed.
If you do things any other way you're liable to end up with something like the attempt on the site where the email might as well have been highlighted instead.
It's a case of someone putting out candy for halloween and someons running away with the bowl screeming! Well you put i out there!
I hope to see an appology from the author of the fork who's hopefully understanding that what they did is not ok.
"The code is open to forking, but we need to enforce our trademarks because otherwise anyone can upload malware claiming to be Notepad++" is a real, legitimate concern and not some kind of ghastly imposition, but I think whoever sent that email didn't even bother thinking about that. They just saw somebody defending IP rights and went straight into attack mode, because that's what a lot of online communities have trained people to do reflexively.
After all, Notepad++ is about as different from Notepad as Notepad+² is from Nodepad++.
I agree. As an open source software enjoyer, I know that unless specified otherwise (and arguably even then), there are exactly _zero_ contractual and/or legal obligations on the part of the maintainer. I'm happy to benefit from battle-tested code, and I'm even happier when I can contribute back to it, for the benefit of all. This is the spirit of open source. Being purposefully obtuse to open source maintainers of such important piece of software is bad for everyone involved.
Also, he's taken a political stance in the past, which turns him into a magnet for certain discussions.
Linux is GPL'ed and the name Linux is also trademarked. But if I decided to port it to run on a lava lamp, what would be wrong with my calling the project "Linux for Lava Lamp"?
A fork's existence does not obligate the mainline maintainer to maintain the fork, no matter what the name of the fork is. As long as the forked project makes the relationship (or lack of relationship) and support expectations clear, I'm not sure what this battle was about.
This is what it’s about: the forked project was NOT clear about the relationship to the original.
- GPL is defines copyright permissions for the software code: copying, modifying, and redistributing.
- Trademark protection controls use of a name, logo, slogan, or branding.
“Notepad++” is a protected trademark, so a fork is allowed to use the GPL-covered source code any way it wants, but it can not use the trademark Notepad++ in a way that suggests it is the original project or is endorsed by it.
It would be like someone forking GnuCash from GPL code and calling then it "Quicken for Linux." The source code can be forked, but the Intuit trademark prevents someone from using the name Quicken because it could confuse users.
Specifically the port author using the Notepad++ name and logo on their website, in addition to the photo and bio of the original Notepad++ author, in a way that could mislead others to think that this was part of the original Notepad++ project.
A post with screenshots is here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen...
Hosting a copy of the GPL'd Linux code, represented as such, and making a website claiming to represent Linux or the Linux Foundation with Linus's face and name on it are different things.
So you can fork all you want, but he can legally prevent you from calling it "Linux".
No, in the same way the GPL does not specify the user must use their own computer to develop the fork rather than taking the upstream maintainer's laptop home without asking.
The GPL grants no rights whatsoever to use the name, just the code.
The GPL covers copyright. It includes the source code, which as you noted contains the project name. This is why you may click "fork" on GitHub and wind up with a fork that is "yours" under the original name.
Trademark law is usage based. If you then set up a website for your fork under the original name, that's illegal. The fact that you're allowed to have a fork containing that name isn't relevant. Copyright allows the code, but you're now violating trademark law.
You can do this not because Linux is GPL, but because Linus Torvalds has authorized certain uses of this trademark in some form; I could not find specific information for Linux, but the Linux Foundation provides reference: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/brand-guidelines
Therein lies the rub. By not honouring the trademark, the fork made the association of service, support, otherwise to Notepad++ making it seem like it was officially supported.
Imagine if someone who used the fork attempt to get support on a product that wasn't supported and, when faced with limited responsiveness, etc. decided to denigrate the original developer by lambasting them on HackerNews, et al. The reputational damage alone would be seen as a reason to defend the mark.
I work with a very large OSS nonprofit who has trademarks in most of the geos around the world and vigourously defends them for precisely this reason: reputational damage undercuts the community, the developers, and the reason for existence.
How many forks do you know which have the same name as the original.
Imagine the confusion if Firefox is compatible with some feature but Firefox and Firefox aren’t.
Imagine who gets angry emails if the MacOS port does any damage and people google for the author of Notepad++
Just look what the author of curl get because people found curl somewhere and googled his name or found it in the source
https://daniel.haxx.se/email/toc.html