GNOME gets GroupedOn

Personally, I'm not a fan of the Firefox trademark licensing, though I understand their reasons for it; I would prefer the trademark to be a separate formal adjective, as Mozilla(tm) Firefox, Ximian(tm) GNOME (if you remember that) and so on. Then the way is clear for others to make their own forks and distributions without having to obfuscate all relationship with the original name. That seems more consistent with the ideals of free software. There is only one GNU Emacs but anyone can create a project called XEmacs or Acme Emacs, etc.

I think we really wouldn't enjoy GNOME descending into the Iceweasel situation where distributions cannot ship local patches without renaming everything. Therefore, I am sceptical of the theoretical value of some future trademark enforcement.

Has that actually happened to any trademark within living memory?

I don't see anything wrong with community members being asked to donate money to the Gnome Foundation, there are plenty of non-corporate users who appreciate GNOME.

I was still on the board of directors when this thing started, and I even raised the point at GUADEC 2014 during the annual general meeting of the Foundation, to get an authoritative answer out to the community that the board was doing something, but it could not be wholly shared with the membership (and the world) at large.

as the campaign page says: it's been a continuous conversation, but Groupon decided not only to *not* rename the product when asked, but also to start filing new applications — that now the Foundation has to object to.

My point in this thread, just to make it clear, is that the commonly cited risk of losing a trademark by not aggressively defending it is not well founded.

Of all the examples people have given so far, most are not in fact legally generic, and for those that are, it's because they're *so* widely used that most people are entirely unaware that they were *ever* trademarks - that's essentially the bar that has to be passed in order for a trademark to be lost, and it's an astronomically high one.

Just to add to that, it's becoming less and less likely over time that a trademark will be ruled legally generic, as the courts get progressively more pro-business and pro-IP over time, which can be seen from the difficulty in finding examples from within the last 50 years, or more than a handful since the 1920s.

I don't mean to say that Gnome should not be defending their trademark, as is their right, just that this particular reason - though commonly given as an explanation in trademark cases - would not really be a valid one.

Would in that case "Gnome" become a generic term (which it actually allready is)?

I'm not sure it'd really be that bad, if Gnome would loose the ability to do what you describe above.

If people would want to get the *real* Gnome, then they would find a way. Just like you can go out and get a fake Coke or a fake watch, you can also go out and get the real one.

Inversely, would that also allow anybody to use Gnome in the way GroupOn is using it?

I'm not sure I'm really seeing the problem.
*t

Nor is there a Swedish conspiracy.

You don't actually believe that the original poster was asserting that Gnome is solely guys and that there exists a Gnome 3 group, do you? That would be reading an awful lot into 3 colloquial words in a throwaway statement.