Hi all,
Below is a draft of a response I plan to send to J.D. Edwards. I would
appreciate your feedback. Do you think its approach is generally ok? Do you
have any suggestions for improvement?
I have to mail the response by Saturday morning as I am leaving for a
week's vacation on Sunday and the post office closes at noon on Saturday
where I live.
Paul
=============================================================
July 19, 2001
Mr. Mark Reinhardt
Associate General Counsel
J.D. Edwards World Solutions Company
One Technology Way
Denver, Colorado 80237
Dear Sir:
This is in response to your letter dated July 11, 2001. When I created the
Java Development Environment for Emacs in 1996, I was unaware that JDE is a
trademark of J.D. Edwards or even of the existence of J.D. Edwards. I used
JDE on my website simply because it is an acronym of the formal name of my
software package, without any intention of competing with any product or
service of J.D. Edwards or creating the impression that I am in any way
associated with J.D. Edwards.
The letters JDE have become synonymous with the Java Development
Environment for Emacs over the last four-and-a-half years in the Open
Source software community where I and my software are highly regarded.
Complying with your demand for me to cease using the acronym on my website
and elsewhere would create confusion in the Open Source community and would
cost me time that I can ill afford as a private individual who receives no
monetary benefit from the Java Development Environment, which I provide to
users free of charge.
I therefore respectfully request that you allow me to continue to use the
acronym JDE to refer to the Java Development Environment for Emacs on my
website and elsewhere. I believe that a careful examination of my web page
will convince you that my usage of this acronym in no way creates the
impression that I am in any way associated with J.D. Edwards or that I am
offering any software or service that competes with a J.D. Edwards
offering. I would happily include an explicit disclaimer of any association
with J.D. Edwards on my web page.
Pending your reply, I have already desisted from using JDE on the main web
page for the Java Development Environment for Emacs. If I receive a
response from you denying my request, I will remove JDE from subsidiary
pages and from the documentation as rapidly as I can.
Sincerely,
Paul Kinnucan
