On 31 May 2012 16:06, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > As Sage grows, we may have to face more and more crap like [1] and > possibly attacks from others, which might force us to completely > change the name of our project to have nothing to do with "sage",
William, I don't suppose you are going to like this, but IMHO you should have seen this issue when you thought of the name. There must have been many names you could have thought of that were less likely to cause trademark issues. It's the same with Richard Fateman and MockMMA. He could have footsore issues, but Richard almost certainly used that name knowing it would cause Wolfram Research some concerns. That's just Richard's personality, as you well know. Mathematica is used for various financial purposes. In fact, I know it is used more by the finance industry than most others. Given this, it would never surprise me if someone wrote some financial applications for Sage. At which point you will be in an almost impossible to defend the name if it got into that field. I think it's fair to say I've made a fairly substantial contribution to Sage, having had a major part of porting it to Solaris. I personally have no concerns about the UW trademarking Sage. I wonder if it might be better to take a long term decision and change the name, and avoid any issues. I doubt the UW owning the trademark will stop claims of infringement. I think you should ask the lawyers what would happen if someone wrote a financial application for Sage. What if it was an accounts package? Seriously, I think a better long term solution is to change the name. Avoid all the legal fees, and be safe in the knowledge that Sage could be used in an area I know Mathematica is used a lot. It would be interesting if you asked for a vote about whether people felt it was best to keep the name, with always the threat of more legal issues, or change it once and for all and pick a name where trademark issues will not arise. One other thing, what happens if you trademark it in the US, and someone starts legal proceedings against users in the UK? Dave -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
