Joshua Chamas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Because O'Reilley has not gone to any lengths
>to separate the camel from perl, the camel is perl.
Rightly or wrongly, O'Reilly has trademarked the association camel <->
perl. Read the ISBN page in your copy of Programming Perl, or indeed any
ORA book.
>But what about an open source project, or a web site
>that happened to use perl ? It would be hard for O'Reilly
>to argue damages, because there are no revenues relating
>to perl.
IANAL, but the reason why they trademark is so that some doofus doesn't go
down to the store looking for "the camel book" and pick up the wrong one.
The images they use are often old enough to be the public domain; so
there's nothing stopping IDG, for example, from using precisely the same
camel image -- except the "association between camel and perl" trademark.
Likewise they don't want people thinking any random perl site is associated
with O'Reilly. Of course, the line between ORA and Open Source is blurry
enough that they benefit from every icon that has the camel logo, but you
can't blame them for wanting to have legal means to enforce their trademark.
>I think the spirit of this is that if you are not
>competing with O'Reilly's commercial activities
>with respect to perl, then don't worry about it.
Matthias Neeracher (the man behind MacPerl) was contacted by ORA about the
use of the camel in the ICONS for MacPerl. They can and *will* pursue the
matter.
That said, they do allow non-profits and others to use the camel, e.g. the
Perl Mongers. It's not evil, they're just trying to protect a trademark
which they built. AFAIK no one associated a camel w/perl before the ORA
books.
--
Neil Kandalgaonkar [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Systems Architect, Stylus Inc. http://www.stylus.ca/
