Ethereal becomes Wireshark [LWN.net]

Ethereal is a well-known packet grabber/analyzer tool - or, at least, it was. Core developer Gerald Coombs has sent out a notice stating that he has changed jobs, and that, as a consequence, Ethereal will now be known as Wireshark. There has been a certain amount of confusion as to whether this change represents a fork in the project. A followup message from Gerald tries to address some of the issues: it seems that his former employer had trademarked "Ethereal" and is unwilling to release the name. This move might well be a fork, but it looks like Wireshark is where the development action will be in the future. (Thanks to Brad Hards).

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Fork?

Posted Jun 10, 2006 4:42 UTC (Sat) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link] (2 responses)

That probably depends on who owns the code, and how the developer community moves. If development shifts lock-stock-and-barrel to wireshark.org, which is what he seems to have it set up for, then Ethereal may be a valueless asset. Reading between lines, but it sounds like his former employer thinks that there is continuing value in the mark, regardless of Gerald Coombs's involvement. My question is, what do they own? While they are free to keep developing the GPL source, and to try and retain as many members of the Ethereal team as possible, it's not like they are free to relicense it. If it splits, are they both forking?

Possible they just don't want to be associated with future potential actions of the software development team; rather let the mark die than leave a potential liability open. And since they're called Ethereal, Inc., I'm not sure they can avoid getting hit by mark tainting.

Maybe he won't have to make that mistake again, useful though it was at the time. :)

Fork?

Posted Jun 15, 2006 8:48 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

It's also possible that they believe the mark has value in application to
other things. Or do trademarks not work that way?

Fork?

Posted Jun 15, 2006 19:04 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Good info on trademarks at Chilling Effects. If the company wanted to do a "line extension" of the Ethereal mark to other network software, it would probably hold up, but if they wanted to use it for RSS readers or a chain of Meat on a Stick restaurants, they'd have to apply again.