Comment by dec0dedab0de

3 years ago

...domains and trademarks...are one of the most important assets any Free Software project has (if not the most important)...

This rubs me the wrong way. Surely the discussion history, documentation, and the freaking code are more important than the name.

I generally don't like open source becoming beholden to comercial interests, and I don't know enough about this story to know if that's really what is happening here. Reading that the name may be more important than the code is just very off-putting.

14 comments

dec0dedab0de

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rhaway84773  3 years ago

No it’s not, because none of that is unique to an open source project. Anyone can come in and use those assets. Heck, that’s the whole point of open source.

The only thing that is unique to an open source project is its reputation, and the reputation is most strongly tied with its name and trademarks.

  • sangnoir  3 years ago

    > Anyone can come in and use those assets.

    That's not quite right: trademarks are different to copyright. Most open source licenses grant a copyright licenses, but not the trademark.

    Over a decade ago there was a kerfuffle when Mozilla didn't approve of Debian's Firefox patchset and asserted that Debian couldn't use the name "Firefox" for the (still licensed for redistribution) source code Debian had. They had the rights to use, modify and redistribute the Firefox code - but not the name. For a while, the Mozilla browser was known as "IceWeasel" on Debian and Debian variants.

yamtaddle  3 years ago

On the other hand... OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice. Clearly the name was immensely valuable in that case.

  • GuB-42  3 years ago

    Is it?

    I quickly accepted LibreOffice as "the new OpenOffice". It happens all the time, MariaDB is the new MySQL, uBlock Origin is the new uBlock, etc...

    I expect that if Gitea messes up, the community will quickly fork and the fork will overcome the original. And considering the scope of the tool. For people who install and manage Gitea instances, keeping up to date with the tech world is often part of their job, so I don't expect a name change to be such a big deal. Gitea users are typically developers, which I hope are tech savvy enough not to be thrown off by a change in logo (assuming the instance is not rebranded).

    • account42  3 years ago

      You may have quickly accepted LibreOffice, but it took 5 years for LO to overtake OpenOffice and to this day the OO name is still plenty popular: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=OpenOffice,LibreO...

      And this is for a case where the overlords of the old name have done fuck all with it - imagine how the situation would be if someone with more interest and marketing sense than the Apache Software Graveyard would have gained control of the name.

  • ipaddr  3 years ago

    The new name was the issue, it was too clever and close to the original. OfficeSuite or IceOffice or TerraOffice. Something about the word Libre makes it seem like the outdated copy.

  • red_trumpet  3 years ago

    Sure it was immensely valuable. But imagine if the code disappeared overnight. Then LibreOffice wouldn't be were it is now.

    • yamtaddle  3 years ago

      > one of the most important assets

      Emphasis mine. I think that's a defensible statement about names/trademarks for any project that's gained meaningful traction, and Open- vs. Libre-Office is an apt illustration of that.

    • afiori  3 years ago

      If LibreOffice's code disappeared or was stolen overnight they could pretty quickly get it back from one of their many forks, if their trademark/domain/package names got stolen or lost it would cause lasting damage.

rapnie  3 years ago

> I generally don't like open source becoming beholden to comercial interests

Yes, but there's the crux. Gitea Ltd having the domains and trademark and then setting project direction means exactly that. While before it appeared or pretended to be a fully community-driven exercise. If you are not part of the company, how can you still considered to be a community-elected Owner that acts as the project's custodian?

notatoad  3 years ago

i think the point is that the code isn't really an "asset" of an open-source project, because anybody who wants to take it can have it, regardless of their affiliation with the "project".

gitea is a brand. whoever owns the domain and trademarks owns the brand.