Trademark issue...

Do you know that feeling when you feel treated unjust? When someone has done wrong to you and you simply cannot do anything against it?

This is exactly what I am feeling again and again these days ever since I heard about the trademark registrations of handhelds.org especially done by George France. I do not want to repeat the facts, there is a nice artcile about this here:

http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/05/24/157218&tid=41

By now I set any lever in movement I could against this really more than questionable action. I know 100% that George France is wrong in doing what he did.

First of all it is morally wrong.

We are all open source projects investing our spare time in things we see as meaningful, fun or simply "good". We do this in good faith and are protected under the hoods of the various open source licenses, GPE in special uner GPL and LGPL. A trademark is similarly as a patent the formal right of the trademark owner to decide for which and where to use it or which uses to not allow. This is against the freedom of open source! This limits our and your freedom if you are not allowed to publically call your project the name it is originally been given: GPE

Second it was done in the wrong way.

If at all then George France would have had the full obligation to speak with the respective projects *first* before doing any action. But he did not.

Third the reasoning he gives is wrong.

He sais that he is forced to do so in order to protect hh.org - non sense. Other sites, look at SourceForge, do not do it with no harm for them or others. He sais that the names have been owned by hh.org anyway - non sense! Hh.org at the time when *I* registered GPE there positioned itself as a hosting and development site. Some developments where done there but a lot were merely hosted, this was also true for GPE. No hh.org maintainer, i.e. hh.org staff, ever had anything to do with GPE. George sais that hh.org was first to use the name of GPE - non sense! I wonder how hh.org would want to do this since *I* "invented" the name, *I* did create the first GPE homepage and kernel concepts hosted it. Even hh.org still carries evidence for this, see

http://handhelds.org/hypermail/ipaq/108/10806.html

He claims that hh.org is a product rather than a hosting site and that projects from hh.org are part of that product and as such are "owned" by hh.org. Wow, no more comment...

So George is plain 100% wrong.

But still he and some friends continue to spread this FUD.

And here comes the best thing, the hh.org Trademark Policy:

http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/TrademarkPolicy

I would accept this for the name handhelds.org itself, yes. But this shall now also apply to the names of other projects that George registered. This would require that we have to kindly ask George for permission to use our name! And it would also require to ask for permission for any company that would like to sell services around those projects - but this is exactly the business model around open source!? This is crazy. And it is especially inacceptable.

I am in contact with several open source friendly organisations and we will object and fight against this trademark registration.

Stay tuned - this *will* be resolved.

I am especially annoyed how again and again words are twisted during this struggle. Suddenly a site that worked with the community and for the community shall no be a commiunity site, namely hh.org, and George even claims it never was one! Suddenly a wacky mainatined distribution (sometimes better sometimes worse) is the great hh.org product. Suddenly hosted projects are integral parts of it - iterestingly noone ever told us that. Reasons for all this are suddenly invented out of thin air - and this is where they sometimes vanish again. And then solutions are thought of that have only one goal: Muffling the people that are concerned, giving them seeming control over something that someone actually stole from the people that created it!

The OPIE people currently think of moving OPIE to another hosting machine. George generously accepted this proposal with two strings attached: 1. They have to accept that the trademark will still belong to George and that they are only allowed to use it (until further notice). 2. If projects like OPIE-II still want to use the name OPIE they have to move to this new site and must not be located at Linux To Go - Why is that? Guess why...

Don't be mislead by this "information"! Think yourself. Think what you would feel like if someone would trademark your name without telling you and then requesting you to choose a different name or obey his rules.

No my dear fellows. This will not happen, not with me.