On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 10:46 AM Arthur Heymans <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi > > Thanks for the reply. > > Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the >> project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating >> them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating >> attitude and I completely disagree with it. > > > Language is not a set in stone thing. There are default grammatical rules > on how to write things and sometimes it is worth it to override the rules > as I explained. > It's basically a trade-off. > There is no right and wrong here, except maybe from a trademark > perspective, which most people are unaware of. > Later I make the case that even from a trademark perspective I don't think > it matters. > I'm making the case that enforcing to write "coreboot" lowercase has more > downsides than upsides, which is why I propose to allow "Coreboot" at the > start of a sentence. > Personally I think educating people about a trademark thing is superfluous > work. > Also in my personal communication it's a conundrum. > For instance if I write a blog post I don't want to look like I'm making > silly grammatical mistakes to those that haven't looked into the trademark > registry (which almost no one does). > At the same time I don't want to explain the trademark either as I think > it blunts communicative efficiency. > > Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" >> spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something >> unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, >> making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense. >> > > So currently the only reason lowercase coreboot is enforced is because > that's how the trademark was obtained. > I'm using the argument that trademark interpretation is typically broad > and allows for using an uppercase letter at the start of a sentence since > that's what grammatical rules want. > So I think "Coreboot" is very much covered by the "coreboot" trademark. > This matches my understanding that trademarks cover variations of font, size, color, and combinations of upper/lowercase lettering. No need to be overly pedantic about writing "coreboot" versus "Coreboot" etc. so long as the project is not misrepresented. If a company tries to sell a product called "CoReBoOt" or something then we'll C&D them. We should probably use `coreboot` in areas internal to coreboot, such as our documentation, but I wouldn't ding people for using `Coreboot` in casual contexts such as forums, commit messages, etc.
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