Hi Thanks for the reply.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the > project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating > them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating > attitude and I completely disagree with it. Language is not a set in stone thing. There are default grammatical rules on how to write things and sometimes it is worth it to override the rules as I explained. It's basically a trade-off. There is no right and wrong here, except maybe from a trademark perspective, which most people are unaware of. Later I make the case that even from a trademark perspective I don't think it matters. I'm making the case that enforcing to write "coreboot" lowercase has more downsides than upsides, which is why I propose to allow "Coreboot" at the start of a sentence. Personally I think educating people about a trademark thing is superfluous work. Also in my personal communication it's a conundrum. For instance if I write a blog post I don't want to look like I'm making silly grammatical mistakes to those that haven't looked into the trademark registry (which almost no one does). At the same time I don't want to explain the trademark either as I think it blunts communicative efficiency. Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" > spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something > unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, > making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense. > So currently the only reason lowercase coreboot is enforced is because that's how the trademark was obtained. I'm using the argument that trademark interpretation is typically broad and allows for using an uppercase letter at the start of a sentence since that's what grammatical rules want. So I think "Coreboot" is very much covered by the "coreboot" trademark. Arthur Heymans On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 7:19 PM Angel Pons <th3fan...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 3:48 PM Arthur Heymans <art...@aheymans.xyz> wrote: > > > > Hi > > > > The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. > > We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would > dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence. > > > > This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like > "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they > have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words > grammar exceptions seems reasonable. > > > > Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know > about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on > people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks > grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of > some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot > that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules. > > > > People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a > sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top > of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to > educate others on this trademark thing. > > > > Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are > registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. > I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same > applies to "coreboot". > > > > So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? > I would suggest to simply allow both ways. > > I am not sure if I understood you correctly. > > Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the > project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating > them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating > attitude and I completely disagree with it. > > Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" > spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something > unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, > making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense. > > Or is it something else? Then... *confused noises* > > > Arthur Heymans > > _______________________________________________ > > coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org > > To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-le...@coreboot.org > > Best regards, > Angel >
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