Congrats on Julia Computing stuff! We (IPython/Jupyter) are always thinking about various approaches to making open source sustainable and it is great to see explorations like this. I wish you the best of success!!!
I wanted to share some thoughts and questions about trademark as it relates to open source projects. These thoughts have come out of many years of thinking about, and even enforcing, trademarks in the context of Jupyter/IPython. With IPython/Jupyter, the yet-to-be-filed trademarks (there is a bit of subtlety about the IPython trademark - that is another topic) will belong to our non-profit sponsor, NumFocus (we will transfer it to them). Along with that, we will be developing a trademark usage policy that clarifies to the community how our names and logos can be used. I am guessing that our policy will be similar to that of other open source projects like Python: https://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/ It is likely that we will have a trademark policy that allows generous usage of the names IPython/Jupyter by the open source community, but we would not allow companies to use the trademarks in ways that would confuse users. A company could say "our platform uses the open source Project Jupyter" but not "our company is called JupyterFoo." IANAL, but it is my understanding that the bar for trademark confusion is relatively low and that there is a real danger to not enforcing trademarks, so these issues are important to understand. I think you can see where this is going wrt Julia... * Who holds the trademarks on Julia? NumFocus, an individual or Julia Computing? * What is the trademark policy of that entity? If it doesn't exist, who will create it? * Is Julia Computing infringing upon the Julia trademark? Has the trademark owner given permission to Julia Compute to use the trademark? * By using the name "Julia" in the company and open source project, is the trademark owner creating a precedence of not enforcing the trademark? * Do you want *other* companies to be allowed to use "Julia" trademarks in their name? I want to be clear - I am all for commercialization efforts around open source and am very excited about where Julia is headed. I also don't have any ideas about what the answers to these questions should be for your community. Cheers, Brian On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 1:20:15 PM UTC-7, Viral Shah wrote: > > Hello all, > > You may have seen today’s Hacker News story about Julia Computing: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516298 > > As you all know, we are committed to Julia being high quality and open > source. > > The existence of Julia Computing was discussed a year ago at JuliaCon > 2014, though we recognize that not everyone is aware. We set up Julia > Computing to assist those who asked for help building Julia applications > and deploying Julia in production. We want Julia to be widely adopted by > the open source community, for research in academia, and for production > software in companies. Julia Computing provides support, consulting, and > training for customers, in order to help them build and deploy Julia > applications. > > We are committed to all the three organizations that focus on different > users and use cases of Julia: > > 1. The open source Julia project is housed at the NumFocus Foundation. > http://numfocus.org/projects/ > > 2. Research on various aspects of Julia is anchored in Alan’s group at > MIT. http://www-math.mit.edu/~edelman/research.php > > 3. Julia Computing works with customers who are building Julia > applications. http://www.juliacomputing.com/ > > Our customers make Julia Computing self-funded. We are grateful that they > have created full time opportunities for us to follow our passions. Open > source development will never cease. > > You may have questions. Please shoot them here. We will respond back with > a detailed blog post. > > -viral > >
