Le Vendredi 10 Février 2006 15:16, Loic Dachary a écrit : > Mathieu Roy writes: > > Loic, can the FSF France do anything in this regard. I'm not thinking of > > getting in the legal field, there's nothing to gain I guess in this > > regard, that would just be a waste of time. But maybe you could get in > > touch with them. And if they refuse to take into consideration the > > interest of both of us, maybe you could go public about the issue. > > There is not much we can do. If the guy is unconcerned, we > must let go. Diplomacy is the only way. From a practical point of > view, since the goal of savane and esavane are different I hop it > won't be too much of a problem. > > Going public won't be useful, IMHO. And I wonder if the > potential harm is worth the trouble. Since Savane is not a registered > trademark, we are exposed to that kind of annoyance.
To name a potential issue, imagine CERN starting using eSavane to manage their computers park. Confusion for users having to use both Savane and eSavane would likely be very usual: users don't care about the name of the software they use. If they report an issue, they won't know exactly the name of the software they are using, especially they won't make a difference between eSavane and Savane, tools both dedicated to management (one being software management, the other being hardware management). OK, that's fictional, CERN does not use eSavane. But should it could. And this could happen elsewhere. The bottom line is: it is a disservice to users to pick such similar names. I'd be willing to reconsider Savane name itself if it was of any help. Maybe we should name it something like Savane Forge or I don't know. I'm not fond of the "Forge" thing but it seems, due to sourceforge, that people get the picture when being told it is a "Forge". I have no other idea in mind. Having it named GNU Savane would have been an option but considering troubled past, it is unlikely to happen. Anyway, another name should have Savane as part of it and would remain in any cases the system name. The fact that another software on a completely different topic is also already named Savane somehow also raise the issue in another light. There are no real name clash in this case because this other software is in no way similar to Savane, but nevertheless it could be good if we have just one extra word in our long name to avoid any doubts. I'm not really considering things from the very legal point of view. I do not care about brands so far and I would not waste time (and money, to put it bluntly) on such issues. I received a new message from the eSavane main developer that seems know more open to discussion and maybe he will accept to change it's project name to something visually more distinct from Savane. This change of attitude is nice and maybe some good will come out it. Anyway, I hope that if some day we had real serious issue, people that benefits of our work into Savane for free would be somehow supportive, for instance by volunteering to mediate (which seem no longer needed for this case but could have been). Regards, -- Mathieu Roy +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | General Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org/ | | Computing Homepage: http://alberich.coleumes.org/ | | Not a native english speaker: | | http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
