On 1/26/2012 5:05 AM, andy pugh wrote: > On 25 January 2012 19:10, Chris Radek<[email protected]> wrote: >> Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project >> from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy >> multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for >> us and our loved ones; > I think that rolling over and giving them exactly what they want was > the right thing to do for this reason. > > However it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had we > been able to persuade them that their quarrel was with NIST who chose > the EMC name. > There's no refuge for us there.
Last week I said "As for NIST's role, it's unfortunate that Enhanced Machine Controller was chosen as the name of the system and that EMC is a natural shorthand for it. That's history and I think we should celebrate it, but I don't see anything is to be gained holding our breath until we turn blue." Even supported software (which the software at issue is not) from NIST bears a disclaimer drafted in the General Counsel's office. It typically reads,in part, "This software was developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code this software is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. These programs are experimental systems. NIST assumes no responsibility whatsoever for their use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. " The name is surely one of those other characteristics. Had the NIST General Counsel received such a letter as did the board he would have advised an immediate name change to avoid the perception of trademark infringement. (In my career at NIST, I spent more than a few hours with the General Counsel and staff. I got a pretty good idea of how they work. There has always been a strong policy of neither infringing on nor endorsing private-sector products.) Have you ever wondered about the strange made-up names of many commercial products---notably pharmaceuticals, which are as numerous as software? The companies use computer programs to generate and test candidate names for appropriateness in various languages (sometimes they have missed this one big time), potential trademark infringement, etc. Choosing an initialism or acronym based on beginning letters of a catchy phrase is typically a non-starter for them. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
