On Fri, Feb 26, 1999 at 10:11:16AM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen wrote: > I have seen no responses made public yet, nor any statement from SPI > regarding the "Open Source" trademark situation, nor any indication if (and > if so, how) the trademark situation is affected by Bruce Perens' statement > regarding his resignation from OSI (widely publicised and discussed in free > software news media, e.g. > http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/18/0927202.shtml), in which he accuses > OSI (and Eric Raymond in particular) of having lost the free software focus, > and hints at unconscionable abuse of the Open Source mark. > > The opensource.org domain still has "Software in the Public Interest" as its > registrant, and http://www.spi-inc.org/trademarks still says "The Open > Source trademark is managed by Eric Raymond on behalf of the free software > community". However, http://www.opensource.org/osi-launch.html still claims > SPI transfered the "Open Source" mark to Eric Raymond and that OSI's > "mission will be to own and defend the Open Source trademark, [...]". > > In short, the "Open Source" trademark situation is still a mess, and there's > a distinct possibility of it getting even messier, and I've seen no signs of > activity by SPI to untangle this mess since the announcement I quoted > earlier. > > Needless to say, I find this extremely disappointing. I can only express my > (unfortunately increasingly dwindling) hope that SPI will act now, and act > in an open fashion to resolve this issue.
Agree, agree, agree, in general. Having been subscribed to the SPI board list for some time I think the problems center around: - The board being generally too busy with personal matters to draft or decide action on the mark. - A general hesitance to piss ESR or OSI in general off. I think that getting more people involved would help raise confidence in taking independant action and would create more calories of human energy to attack these problems with. -- ___________________________________________________________________ Ean Schuessler As above Novare International Inc. so below --- Some or all of the above signature may be a joke
