Software Freedom Law Center Launches Trademark War Against Software Freedom Conservancy (sfconservancy.org) 113
Long-time Slashdot reader Bruce Perens writes: The Software Freedom Law Center, a Linux-Foundation supported organization, has asked USPTO to cancel the trademark of the name of the Software Freedom Conservancy, an organization that assists and represents Free Software / Open Source developers.
What makes this bizzare is that SFLC started SFC, SFLC was SFC's law firm and filed for the very same trademark on their behalf, and both organizations were funded by Linux Foundation at the start.
There are a few other wild things that have happened related to this. Eben Moglen, president of SFLC and for decades the General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, is no longer associated with FSF. Linux Foundation has on its executive board a company that is being sued in Germany for violating the GPL, with the case presently under appeal, and the lawsuit is funded by SFC. And remember when Linux Foundation removed the community representative from its executive board, when Karen Sandler, executive director of SFC, said she'd run?
If you need a clue, the SFC are the good guys in this. There's a lot to look into.
What makes this bizzare is that SFLC started SFC, SFLC was SFC's law firm and filed for the very same trademark on their behalf, and both organizations were funded by Linux Foundation at the start.
There are a few other wild things that have happened related to this. Eben Moglen, president of SFLC and for decades the General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, is no longer associated with FSF. Linux Foundation has on its executive board a company that is being sued in Germany for violating the GPL, with the case presently under appeal, and the lawsuit is funded by SFC. And remember when Linux Foundation removed the community representative from its executive board, when Karen Sandler, executive director of SFC, said she'd run?
If you need a clue, the SFC are the good guys in this. There's a lot to look into.
Names (Score:5, Funny)
'Judean People's Front'. We're the People's Front of Judea!
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Splitters!
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Fork off.
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Must be pure coincidence... (Score:1, Troll)
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Biggest/perkiest e-boobs! No-one boasts about having a deep vagina - tight vagina maybe, but no-one really talks about depth much. Get your terminology right!
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Kinda like slashdot.
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Linux is only free if you know the difference between freedom and time. Not sure why "value" is in that statement. Oh, he misunderstood the word "free." lol
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No, people understand what “free” means. You aspies have tried to redefine the term to only mean what you think not what 99% of people mean when they use it.
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You aspies
So, just curious, and you seem up on this type of stuff so I thought I'd ask you.
What is the psychological name for the condition where you run around telling people you think they're disabled, while also trying to bully people for being disabled?
I know what they call it when you do it to people's faces; "assault victim." But what is the word when you only have the courage to do it online?
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No, people understand what “free” means. You aspies have tried to redefine the term to only mean what you think not what 99% of people mean when they use it.
Cool! It's the first time I found someone who thinks Newsspeak Dictionary's definition of "free" is the correct one! I guess it's finally time for Ingsoc to ascend to power! Kudos!
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If only Microsoft could pay more eloquent trolls (Score:2)
PoC+source/link or STFU. (Score:3, Insightful)
See title.
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You speak as if everything else is perfect. At least we have a chance at fixing these issues rather than having to suffer the consequences of Microsoft of the ilk.
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These are the projects SFC represents (Score:5, Informative)
ArgoUML [tigris.org]
ArgoUML is the leading open source UML modeling tool and includes support for all standard UML 1.4 diagrams. It runs on any Java platform and is available in ten languages. See the feature list for more details.
Bongo [bongo-project.org]
The Bongo Project is creating fun and simple mail, calendaring and contacts software: on top of a standards-based server stack; we're innovating fresh and interesting web user interfaces for managing personal communications. Bongo is providing an entirely free software solution which is less concerned with the corporate mail scenario and much more focused on how people want to organize their lives.
Boost [boost.org]
Boost provides free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries.
Boost emphasizes libraries that work well with the C++ Standard Library. Boost libraries are intended to be widely useful, and usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages both commercial and non-commercial use.
Boost aims to establish “existing practice” and provide reference implementations so that Boost libraries are suitable for eventual standardization. Ten Boost libraries are already included in the C++ Standards Committee's Library Technical Report (TR1) as a step toward becoming part of a future C++ Standard. More Boost libraries are proposed for the upcoming TR2.
Bro Network Security Monitor [bro.org]
Bro provides a comprehensive platform for network traffic analysis, with a particular focus on semantic security monitoring at scale. While often compared to classic intrusion detection/prevention systems, Bro takes a quite different approach by providing users with a flexible framework that facilitates customized, in-depth monitoring far beyond the capabilities of traditional systems. With initial versions in operational deployment during the mid '90s already, Bro finds itself grounded in more than 20 years of research.
Buildbot [buildbot.net]
Buildbot is a freely-licensed framework which enables software developers to automate software build, test, and release processes for their software projects. First released in 2003, Buildbot is used by leading software projects around the world to automate all aspects of their software development cycle.
BusyBox [busybox.net]
BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.
BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded systems. To create a working system, just add some device nodes in /dev, a few configuration files
in /etc, and a Linux kernel.
Clojars [clojars.org]
Clojars is a community-maintained repository for free and open source libraries written in the Clojure programming language. Clojars emphasizes ease of use, publishing library packages that are simple to use with build automation tools.
coreboot [coreboot.org]
coreboot is an extended firmware platform that delivers light
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> Boost
Uh, a complete clusterfuck of 1,109 lines of over-engineered Crap++ [boost.org] is NOT the way to sell this. Just saying.
Re:These are the projects SFC represents (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're not in their target audience. I would in general write in C++ rather than C when I have a reason to not do things in Ruby, simply because C++ offers an upgrade over C structures and their management. I try to stay away from STL templates, and haven't used Boost for similar reasons. But I know that Boost has a lot of use at companies, and on some larger projects in the Open Source world.
Re:These are the projects SFC represents (Score:4, Interesting)
Try learning go Bruce (golang.org). It's C done *right*. If I had to write Samba again from scratch, I'd do it in go.
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Also worth mentioning: it's primary use case is with network programming (which it does well). For other use cases, C might be better.
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Well network programming is what I do all day, so... :-)
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So yeah - if you're FB and rolling things out quickly, hourly, etc...then yeah Golang *might* make sense. But if you need any kind of long term stability, multi-language integration, etc- then Golang (and even Rust) is certainly not what you want to be using.
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There's a lot to the standard library. If you mean do I avoid cin, cout, and cerr; yes I did in a library where I defined an abstract base class that required a user-provided subclass for all I/O.
But mostly I avoid containers.
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You clearly dont understand modern c++. With that template you get an optimized CRC implementation for a length specified at compile time. The only thing you need to be able to use is to understand following code // This is "123456789" in ASCII // The expected CRC for the given data // Simulate CRC-CCITT
unsigned char const data[] = { 0x31, 0x32, 0x33, 0x34, 0x35, 0x36, 0x37,0x38, 0x39 };
std::size_t const data_len = sizeof( data ) / sizeof( data[0] );
boost::uint16_t const expected = 0x29B1;
boost::crc_
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> You clearly don't understand modern c++.
Having worked on a professional C++ compiler you clearly don't understand what I know.
> With that template you get an optimized CRC implementation for a length specified at compile time.
And the _last_ time you had actually had to modify CRC was _when_ exactly? That's right, fucking NEVER.
I would rather take 25 CLEAN lines of code compared to 1,000+ of Crap++. Less LOC code == less bugs.
Not to mention compile times are extremely when you leave out all the Boo
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The NRA is basically owned by their main lobbyist and his family. They do nothing but come up with new things that they can sell for their own profit to members. They treat the group like their own personal piggy bank and bend over whenever gun control people yell. They are a false opposition that only supports small and safe pro gun laws and in exchange the Democrat party acts like they still matter and are the gun boogieman.
I've followed gun control/private ownership of firearms politics in the US for quite a while, and this characterization of the NRA doesn't ring true to me. Can you provide any examples of the behavior you attribute to the NRA here? I know it's not directly related to the main topic, but it is being used to establish a pattern that is relevant to the discussion.
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Attack? Now I know that you like exaggerating and spinning things but isn't this over the top ? And how is it relevant to list who you (as you seem to be the SFC spokesperson) "represent"? How would that be relevant for instance if the reason for this conflict is that you (ridiculous example) misrepresent yourself as talking for SFLW without permission?
It's one thing to present ones perspective of something and another to begin listing irrelevant things, even if they are facts. So how about actually present
Re:These are the projects SFC represents (Score:5, Interesting)
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These are the member projects of SFC. An attack on SFC is an attack on these members as well.
No, it isn't. That's binary thinking, Bruce.
Members can, and often do disagree to greater or lesser extent with the organizations they are members of, and the organizations do not automatically speak for them.
I can only presume that your strong feelings about the subject clouded your objectivity for a bit here. You can be righteous or you can be right, and most of the time you're right. This time, however, my perception is that you paint this a bit more black and white, us and them, than it really is.
Re:These are the projects SFC represents (Score:5, Informative)
I think you are missing the extent of the relationship between SFC and the Open Source projects. The projects are not simply members of a club. The projects signed over any copyrights that the project owned in their Open Source software and any other assets to SFC to manage as a 501(c)3 for them, and SFC is thus the legal entity for those projects. SFC literally is the project under the law.
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Member projects of Conservancy don't have to sign over copyrights or other assets, but are welcome to. Many projects don't assign copyright, and that's fine. But as a 501C3, whatever assets a project does sign over to Conservancy will be managed by Conservancy in line with their charitable mission.
Details of services Conservancy offers to their projects are posted pretty clearly: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ [sfconservancy.org]. Project governance and licensing are also mostly project decisions, as long as it's
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Yes, projects aren't compelled to sign over copyrights, although there are definite disadvantages to holding on to them rather than accepting a corporate liability shield, and as far as I can see no advantages. And of course SFC acts in the project's interest.
But this is diverting from the issue. SFLC went after the organization that hosts all of those projects. The projects should stand together with SFC, as should the rest of us.
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And SFLC represents MAME and Kodi. As a MAME developer, that makes me somewhat sympathetic to SFLC.
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So, I have a question for MAME and Kodi to consider. Having seen what SFLC just did to its prior client, do you think you can trust them any longer? If they wanted the name of MAME or Kodi just as they want the name of SFC now, what would you do?
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Well SFLC doesn't own the MAME trademark - it's owned by a project member. If SFLC decides to mess us around, we'll do what we did when David R. Foley [wikipedia.org] tried to tradmark the MAME name in bad faith: lawyer up defend ourselves.
At present we contract SFLC to provide legal representation. That doesn't give them ownership over any part of the project. We own the trademark, we don't assign copyright on code, we don't have a shell company consisting of SFLC employees.
I can understand why SFLC is seeking invalida
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A key issue is that the SFLC directly helped to spin off and incorporate the Conservancy, and assisted the Conservancy in applying to register the SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY® trademark in the US. So it's kind of odd to see the SFLC now - after 6 years - directly appealing to the USPTO to cancel Conservancy's registration without even talking to them first.
To see why this is important, imagine that someone not related to your project, but that had a somewhat-similar trademark registration, suddenly f
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The whole point of open source licenses is that long term availability of the software shouldn't depend on the survival of individual organizations. If the continued existence of SFC is actually important to these software packages, then there is something seriously wrong with SFC.
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That's why we have more than one organization like SFC. But since all of those projects are aggregated in one 501(c)3 which is SFC, there is indeed a risk. If you would like to run an individual 501(c)3 for a single project, I assure you that's a lot of work if you can even get IRS to approve it, and it's expensive. So, having lots of organizations use a parent for their 501(c)3 is a compromise.
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The vast majority of open source projects have no 501(c)3; none of mine do. In fact, many open source projects exist primarily outside the US (imagine that!); are you saying they all need to set up US non-profit organizations and get IRS approval? Furthermore, open source projects that have some kind of associated non-profit need to be set up in a way in
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You hold your Open Source work as a personal asset. This is OK for small projects, usually, but has some problems. Your personal liability and the Open Source are mixed up together. You can lose your copyrights to a creditor in a lawsuit that has nothing to do with the Open Source. Said creditor can then bring copyright prosecutions outside of the community standards, and do other things inimical to the Open Source and its users and developers. And you bear some liability for the Open Source, and thus could
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doctorvo wrote:
"The SFC's primary function is GPL compliance enforcement."
That is simply not true (I'm a Conservancy Board member). The *overwhelming* majority of staff time is spent on maintaining projects (doing accountancy, running conferences, handling expense reports and contacting etc.). There is a negligible amount of time spent in enforcement.
Enforcement makes headlines, but isn't a tiny fraction of what Conservancy does.
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doctorvo wrote:
"Enforcment is the SFC's primary function"
Again, this is simply not true. Samba was one of the initial projects in the Conservancy, and we requested Conservancy have a copyright holding ability as it made it easier for us to accept corporate donations of code. Many corporations do not grant individual developers personal (C), but are fine with a charity holding the (C) on their behalf.
At the time we did not allow corporate ownership of code in Samba, as we didn't want corporations to have the
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I have no idea what the SFC has or hasn't done; I have not paid much attention to the organization before this story. I am going by what Bruce and you hare saying about the SFC and what it does, and the risks inherent in any copyright assignment to an organization like the SFC.
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I'm guessing you're somewhat younger. I've been working on Free Software since the late 1980's and have seen many of the disasters that can befall projects that don't take care of the copyright and legal details. It's all sunshine and roses until *real* money gets involved. Then watch out !
The reason I'm a Conservancy supporter and board member is that, although the staff are also younger, they *care* about details like that. And they *care* about the projects. Details matter.
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It may have escaped your notice, but promoting Free Software *is* political activism. This is what Conservancy was founded to do.
If all you want is technical excellence, the Open Source Team is over there to the left.
And FOSS developers - please don't assign your copyrights to anyone unless you really have to. The above from doctorvo is spectacularly bad advice. I've always kept my own copyrights, and I encourage you to do so.
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It didn't escape my notice at all. That is exactly why one should be careful about who one entrusts the power that comes from having developed successful free software projects. For one, I think an organization that has Google millionaires and employees as its board members cannot be trusted to be an advocate of free software.
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Having money and being a Free Software advocate are not mutually exclusive. For the best example of this, look at John Gilmore who is a tech multi-millionaire and a strong proponent of Free Software (that's how he made his money).
> you became abusive and insulting
Please document where I have been abusive or insulting. I disagree with you, sure. But disagreement is not abuse or an insult.
> You, on the other hand, are talking out of both sides of your mouth, since the SFC very much seeks copyright assig
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You're not merely wealthy, your wealth is intimately connected with a company with a definite agenda (and Google generally prefers open source software to free software), and that calls your judgment into question as a board member of a free software advocacy group. (Besides, anybody can be an advocate for anything; it says nothing about their motivations.)
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Good points all, and I don't disagree with most of them.
However, "I just don't see you as an unbiased actor working in the best interest of the FOSS community" IMHO is a little harsh :-). I think my reputation speaks for itself here. But that's your opinion and you're entitled to it :-).
> And since there is no need for anybody to sign up for anything
> with the SFC, I simply urge caution and reflection for anybody
> considering applying to be "an SFC project"
*Absolutely* correct. In fact, as I'm on t
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I don't think it's "harsh" at all, I think it's realistic: it's impossible for any organization to be unbiased or for it to advocate or work in the best interest of something as diverse as "the FOSS community". You just acknowledged that again by saying that you have rejected FOSS projects because they don't fit your philosophy. That's what I have been criticizing you for. It's
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> Either, you can separate your advocacy from your services; that is
> SFC services can provide legal and infrastructure services to any
>project that satisfies basic FOSS criteria, without being rejected on
> philosophical grounds.
Well the projects that were rejected were done so because they did not want to give up corporate control, despite satisfying basic FOSS criteria.
You are correct in that Conservancy philosophy is not to provide a home for corporate-controlled and wholly owned projects, on
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Hi. I'm Anonymous Coward, and I want to be part of this discussion. However, I can't think of anything intelligent to add, so I throw random insults at people for no rational reason.
Lawyers doing lawyer things (Score:2)
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If I were the judge.....
Firstly both organisations are legal entities subject to the laws of the state of New York.
So we notice that the standards and values of the community will be different from what the law says.
I would rule that SFLC has the older rights to the name and thus fine SFC.
Since SFLC originally approved this situation, that would only be a small fine
Secondly, the names are indeed similar, so only one shall use the phrase 'Software Freedom' in its name.
Considering its standing in the communit
This story is lacking in particulars or motivation (Score:3, Interesting)
By publicly protesting their victimhood the SFC is asking for us to support them, but there just isn't anything to go on here.
Now, they're making the claim that this is completely out of the blue, so maybe that's the point? Is the idea that they don't know anything about this either?
Could be just an unmotivated scream for attention (Score:2)
Moglen - Stallman split (Score:5, Informative)
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Hm. Something about that seems familiar... As though I've seen it before, many many times...
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I think Eben's fundamental premise is wrong, though. The organizations he cited as rejecting GPL in granting research funding were not doing it because the GPL is scary. They are doing it because they are publicly funded, and the GPL is not necessarily the best license to grant maximal utility in a publicly funded project to all of the people, including the proprietary software manufacturers who presumably pay taxes like everyone else (acknowledging arguments that Microsoft hasn't had any Federal income tax
who cares? (Score:1)
Sorry to break it to you, but while a lot of these were involved in the early days of open source, they just don't matter much anymore.
There's only the license and nothing but ;) (Score:2)
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You're right that compliance isn't that big a deal and the only reason GPL violations happen is that companies have a complete failure of due diligence. So, in general I advise that companies get their compliance stuff together, and I give them specific ways to combine proprietary and GPL software that do not violate the GPL.
If you have more questions about how to advise your customers, feel free to ask questions through my email bruce at perens dot com . No charge. If customers attorneys need help with com
Re: There's only the license and nothing but ;) (Score:1)
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You're welcome.
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SFC has been much more active in the community than SFLC. SFLC recently decided that they want to do what SFC does, and the day after they published that decision they filed to challenge the name.
In-depth analysis of the SFLC claim now posted. (Score:2)
FWIW, I wrote up a somewhat in-depth analysis of this SFLC / Conservancy dispute here: http://www.rants.org/2017/11/c... [rants.org]
TL;DR: Software Freedom Conservancy is behaving appropriately, and SFLC is not.
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The saying is "Like Saturn, Revolution devours its children".
Another law that's pertinent is that legal pursuits will always cause exactly as much harm as good.
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