Marc Weustink wrote:
As one of the early Lazarus developers, I feel the time to react.
Hi Marc,
Well I will be as polite as I possibly can :-)
I'm going to try to answer your questions... but the answers are a bit
dark...
sorry for that in advance
IMO, a foundation is for supporting lazarus and not for marketing.
IMO, the foundations should not be called Lazarus but something
related to lazarus.
That's fine.
again IMO, I don't see the need for trademarking the name lazarus.
We're not selling a product. We're creating it.
The problem is that somebody else somewhere else already has paid the
government for the rights in the market to use the name.
Creating is ok. Giving it away to the public though might be illegal.
I will try to explain with a simple explanation..
Say a fellow, let's call him Hans, has a clever moment one day and adds
a motor to a push-bike... brilliant...
Nothing wrong so far....
He spends months working on that bike and one night at 1.45am he paints
on the side of the bike.... bmw.....
still no problem.... absolutely no problem at all... looks nicer than a
bought one he thinks..
all the friends like it and he makes one for all his friends... still no
problem
then, somebody he doesn't know, asks for one and one thing leads to
another and he starts giving them away... for free - mind you - at the
local market....
now there is a problem.... a big problem
The real company, the trademark owner finds out. Suddenly a superior
bike is appearing needing less spare parts.
What Hans has been doing is making something and giving it away to the
public using somebody elses trademark.
The Trademark owner spends 70 euros and gets an order from the local
court to shut Hans down.
But it gets worse. They do some dodgy numbers and try to run it by the
judge.
They demand compensation based on the retail price of the top of the
line bike for every model Hans made and gave away.
They then look at growth rates across the country. They find Hans's city
isn't at the top. So they add the difference between the top city and
Hans city onto the compensation bill for Hans to pay. Why not blame Hans
for that ?
It comes to a very large number.
Hans is now in very big trouble. Hans goes to court but can't beat the
expensive lawyers.
Hans tries to fight for his right to give away motorbikes but ends up
losing his home, car, wife and kids, and friends.
Being in another country is no longer an excuse. Even if I am in
Australia, I can't put those magic three letters on any form of bike and
sell or even give them away.
So whoever owns the trademark, owns the word exclusively for that type
of product. That is the way it is...
What if someone else trademarks a lazarus ide ? Would all my code be
void or owned by someone else ? No. Its still ours.
Open source is different than motor bikes.
But in the theoretical Hans case, he might be forced by the court to
stop working on motor bikes for a period of ten years, in return for not
going to jail for 5 years.
Not sure what the maximum penalty for trademark infringement is, but I
would be surprised if a jail term wasn't possible.
Would it stop me, no.
:-)
how much is a trademark in europe again ? split amonst how many people ?
seems rather cheap to me... price of a bus ticket isn't it ?
Anyway, we're just discussing things, and these are just theoritical
situations.
The real problem here, if you missed the point, is that (your) software
is getting too good to give away freely. It has to have a unique makers
stamp... don't spoil it with a name that was found in the street...
Regards
David
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