Comment by mynegation
7 months ago
Raycast will either hire you or send you a cease-and-desist order. Either way, I would change the name now.
7 months ago
Raycast will either hire you or send you a cease-and-desist order. Either way, I would change the name now.
Fair point! I've actually thought about that before; I've tried to be extremely clear in the project's README with a disclaimer that this is a non-commercial hobby project and is not affiliated with the official Raycast team in any way.
The name is just for identification, as the project's goal is to be a compatible, open-source alternative for the Linux community, a platform they don't currently serve.
That being said, I'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks for bringing it up!
That shouldn't matter. They might even have a Linux version in the works, given they are doing Windows now. They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it. You also seem to be using their brand assets like the logo. I get your intention and love what you were able to accomplish but if you intend for this to grow, you are better off doing this now.
> They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it.
Only the logo and name. The functionality side should be perfectly fine, there are oodles of precedent for reversing a workable program from someone's commercial API: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
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It should matter that it's a non-commercial hobby project. It's nice to see the light pushback.
They use react-native, no? One of the main issues is that all react-native implementations are half baked and dead.
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That makes sense -- I'll go figure something out, thanks for the explanation!
“Just for identification” is the point — the name Raycast identifies their product, and it’s their trademark. You can’t use it without permission, even with a disclaimer in the readme.
> The name is just for identification
That’s precisely what they’d dislike about it. You’d be creating “brand confusion” by using their trademark in your own name. You couldn’t make “My Cola (Recreating Coke)” without getting an expensive and inconvenient letter from their legal team.
It's worse than that -- "Recreating Raycast" is just the blog post title, the project is called "raycast-linux".
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I've had to look into for my own side projects, you don't want to include brand names, trademarks, etc in your own projects' names and you should be very wary about how you use them in your marketing if you choose to do so at all.
I propose cast-a-ray (sounds like castaway and goes along with FOSS wink+tonge-in-cheek style). Or maybe waycast?
I'm sorry, but in my accent (speech impairment?) "cast-a-ray" sounds almost like "castrate", so I can't back your naming idea. :P
As well as the logo used, name references from all other places and even tweaking the looks a bit.