that it would be replaced before this much momentum gathered but I guess, by now, everyone has become attached to it.
Again, none of what I say comes from inside information, I don't know anyone beyond ordinary dev level at Adobe, but I am pretty sure that something like this WILL crop up and it will happen at a particularly bad time for the project. Don't forget, although they haven't said much publicly, Adobe take any threat to their bottom line very, very seriously and have war-gamed all of this stuff. Donnacha On 8/21/07, Donnacha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > RE: Trademarks > > To clarify what I meant, this issue has come up in discussion with > some very switched on people but not, I have to stress, anyone in > Adobe itself. The context was people in fairly high positions, > discussing the tricky problem, faced by many proprietary software > makers, of how to counter OSS competition without provoking a > publicity backlash; Adobe/Red5 came up as a perfect case study. > > There was total agreement that the Red5 developers have been > meticulous in ensuring that they didn't infringe Adobe's IP but the > name itself was identified as their Achilles heal, not necessarily > because it infringes a trademark or servicemark, although it may, but > because it comes close enough to justify a court case. > > The case of a claimant against Red5 would not be strong enough to > guarantee a win and, therefore, would not be worth taking UNLESS a > third party anonymously funded the legal costs as a distraction/FUD > tactic, just as Microsoft part-funded SCO's anti-Linux actions. This > form of anonymous funding is 100% legal and very common practice among > American corporations. > > In the case of targeting OSS projects, the presumption is that no > formal structure is in place to fund a defense and that the costs will > be borne by the lead developers with no prospect, in this type of > action, of re-couping their costs even if they win - each side eats > their own costs. > > This expensive process massively favors corporations and the vast > majority of these disputes never make it to court, never come to > public attention. > > As any such action would be a once-off opportunity and would be held > in reserve until it can be used to maximum effect, probably after the > project goes 1.0 and a lot of momentum has built up behind the > disputed name - being forced to change it at that point would be a > serious set-back. > > When the project was initially launched, I presumed that Red5 was > temporary title, a cute Star Wars reference that would soon be > replaced with a better name, one for which the .com was still > available. I never expected it would last this long, I figured that a > _______________________________________________ Red5 mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/red5_osflash.org
