On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Quim Gil <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 17:40 +0200, ext Greg KH wrote: >> Of course, a "real" cease-and-desist order would have to be filed for >> any of this to be able to be properly discussed, which I think, is the >> proper next step of the Linux Foundation if they really wish to persue >> this issue. > > Greg, do you enjoy legal escalation? I'm sure nobody in this list does. > > In marketing terms "Smeegol" is a perfect example of MeeGo brand > dilution. You wouldn't have called it Smeegol if there would not have > been MeeGo in the first place.
Who cares about "marketing terms"? Legally speaking the term is trademark dilution, and it refers to using the trademark for unintended uses, like pizzas; it doesn't apply in this case as Smeegol is practically MeeGo with a different name. > For all this reasons a cease-and-desist would be a bad (and probably > pointless) approach. This is about common sense and community dialog > now. A cease-and-desist would fail because: 1) No sane human been would confuse a "Smeegol product" with a "MeeGo product" 2) The MeeGo trademark is not being weakened in any way Moreover, good luck with painting MeeGo as community friendly after that. > You warned about your intentions in this list weeks ago. Somehow the > Linux Foundation & MeeGo TSG didn't react at the time in the way they > did when the posts about the Smeegol release came under their radar. > > Yes, this problem could have been solved with a simple rename weeks ago. > Now you have extra work with a name change and the corresponding > explanation. Still, Smeegol *is* a precedent of brand dilution and bad > precendents are really bad for young brands. Ultimately your project > depends on a bruight and successful MeeGo project and we kindly ask you > to help on that by renaming your even younger project. The MeeGo project depends on more thank pristine brands for marketing purposes. For example, community members like Smeegol that feel part of the project. > Please pick something unrelated to "MeeGo", keep using the software > following the linceses of each component, keep helping to the > propagation and improvement of that software and all we will be happy in > this happy MeeGo family. > > At the end, is it a big deal? Anybody in the free software community has > seen plenty of project re-brands for various reasons, most of them > without much hassle or big deals. > > Sorry for the hassle and thank you for your understanding. The question is: Why? Because some MeeGo guys don't like it? What I'm mostly worried is *why* people felt the need to create spin-offs. Maybe we should be thinking about using NetworkManager instead of ConnMan; shall we start a new thread about that? Other than ConnMan, is there any other reason why the MeeGo core is not suitable? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution -- Felipe Contreras _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
