If you don't get open source's trademark culture, expect bad language It's a classic story. An outfit, in this case the Rust Foundation, decides to change some rules, in this case the acceptable use of trademarks. The outfit's best friends, in this case the Rust community, takes umbrage and the outfit backs down. If you want to know how often this type of thing happens, search The Register for …
I suspect that these rules were probably written by a lawyer who had no understanding of working with open source projects. Although they seemed way beyond their remit saying things such as you can't register a domain name or subdomain using the Rust TM.
Considering rust is a generic name I suspect there are already a lot of domain names registered that are nothing to do with the Rust the programming language, the up and coming Alec Baldwin movie is called Rust and no doubt they will want to have a domain name with Rust in it, and probably wouldn't be seeking permission from the Rust foundation to use the name.
I suspect the person who came up with the implementation forgot (or didn't know) who has power in open source. The top people in open source actually have very little power. The power is in all the contributors & supporters. As these are volunteers, you can't order them to do anything.
A classic is what happened with Libre/Open Office. Oracle tried to force one thing and everyone else said "Nope", walked away, forked the code and LibreOffice was born (almost) overnight. A few years down the line, LibreOffice is the default and OpenOffice....?
"I suspect that these rules were probably written by a lawyer"
Very likely, but the lawyer still has to be briefed and it's up to someone from the foundation to do that, review the results, go back and forth as many times as are required. The lawyer can provide the law but the foundation has to provide the culture. Either the foundation didn't do that or they don't share the culture of the community they're supposed to be supporting. Maybe they forget they were supporting a community.
I was just thinking that. Lawyers work for people and organisations under the instructions they are given, not the other way round. Whatever way you want to look at this, its a monumental foot shooting from the peeps at the Rust Foundation who organised this. They either didnt bother to brief legal or they didnt bother to check what came back before publishing. Its either incompetence at a monumental scale or they got what they asked for, in which case its greed and arrogance at a monumental scale
"Although they seemed way beyond their remit saying things such as you can't register a domain name or subdomain using the Rust TM."
A single word trademark is rife with problems. Apple was "Apple Computer" and later changed to "Apple, Inc". No trademark would be issued for just "Apple". Microsoft Office is "Microsoft Office" and not just "Office". Made up names can be trademarked so Biro, Jello and Hoover are fine. The companies do have to do work to protect those trademarks and sometimes aren't going to have much luck in the case of something like Xerox being used to denote a photocopy. I think the Jello trademark is shot through with holes and they'd only have a chance of defending it if another maker of gelatin desert used the name.
Single-word trademarks are common and they work fine. Apple did trademark just Apple, as well as Apple Computer. They are now known as Apple Inc, having dumped the Computer part of their name long ago. See also: Windows, Office, Java, and a variety of others. Trademarks have to be granted in specific categories or industries, such that Apple can own the trademark for hardware and software, but someone else can own it for a company doing something completely different. This is exemplified by their working with the Apple-branded music company to share the trademark, which worked for three decades until it was decided that it would be better for Apple (computer) to have all the rights and just license them back to Apple (music) rather than get into fights every time Apple introduced a music-based product or feature.
Rust could do the same, and it makes some sense that they would. Unfortunately, instead of advocating that people are careful with where they use the trademark, they tried to prevent it entirely.
> No trademark would be issued for just "Apple".
There are currently 55 live trademark registrations on the UK trademark registry consisting of just the word "Apple". Therefore it is clearly possible to get just the word "Apple" registered.
As always, they are further restricted by type of goods, region of use and so on to differentiate them from each other.
Obviously you can't call your household appliance a hoover if it is made by Dyson. But if you were a publication that specialises in household appliances, you could absolutely use the Hoover name, even in the headline, if you were writing about an appliance that was actually produced by the Hoover Corporation, and you wouldn't need any sort of permission to do this.
You could even have an entire section called Hoover, alongside sections called Dyson etc if that is how you wanted to organise your content.
I respectfully disagree.
In my own house I can do whatever I want, including calling my dishwasher a Hoover if I so wish.
As a commercial outfit, however, I'm pretty sure that I would most definitely get in trouble if I sold dishwashers with Hoover as a model name.
Just like I have always and always will tell you to go google something. GoogleTM doesn't like it ? I'm waiting for their lawsuit, me and a billion other people.
In Currys, I see
HOOVER H-Dish 300 HDI 1LO38S-80/T Full-size Fully Integrated NFC Dishwasher
HOOVER H-Dish 300 HF 3C7L0B Full-size WiFi-enabled Dishwasher
for sale, which I'm sure they would have purchased from the Hoover Corporation or their authorised UK distributor.
The existence of words like "NFC" and "WiFi" in the product description mean that I would immediately cross them off my list of models to research before making a purchase.
Hoover is a brand name owned by Chinese white goods company Haier in Europe and Hong Kong company Techtronic for the US market.
But in UK “hoover” is just a generic term for any vacuum cleaner. Other things have achieved this generic status like Biro, Stove, coke etc
Coke carbonated drink, not degassed coal.
"Maybe your next fridge or washing machine will come with ChatGPT built in!"
Yours might. Mine won't.
The only washers I buy don't contain a computer (Speedqueen). Likewise my fridges and freezers (mostly Traulsen). Consumer grade appliances are trash, with no longevity and (usually) no repair options[0]. Adding Internet access to it only makes it connected trash. I'd rather spend a lot of money once than a little bit of money many times (and each time losing the contents of my freezer ... ).
[0] Here in California, it is illegal to replace a part of the consumer grade refrigerant system. You have to remove it and replace it as a complete, sealed unit. That's right ... The compressor, evaporator, condensor, expansion valve, and every other piece that has refrigerant in it can only be replaced as a complete sealed unit. This means that once the compressor dies, it's cheaper to throw it away and buy a new fridge, even though a new compressor can usually be purchased for around a hundred bucks ... How "smart" is your new fridge now, consumer?
"I’d be surprised if they don’t even contain microcontrollers"
Industrial microcontrollers for motor control, yes. But they are designed for the environment they are used in, are insulated from the consumer, and last virtually forever. Note that the user controls on most Speedqueen units lead to control circuitry with stand-alone components which can be individually replaced if they ever die ... none of mine ever have.
Most other modern consumer washer/dryer pairs have flimsy computers that are wired directly to the membrane switch control panel where they can get zapped by the static generated by whatever the consumer has just removed from the dryer. (To be fair, Maytag and others may still sell machines with non-computerized controls, but I can't be arsed to look.)
I don't buy the laundromat versions, I purchase the household units. Yes, I'm aware of the membrane controls on the TR line. I haven't eyeballed those machines physically, nor have I seen their schematics, so I'll defer passing judgement. Gut feeling is the control panel is a primary failure mode, though.
"Here in California, it is illegal to replace a part of the consumer grade refrigerant system."
Make sure you have friends in other states that will forward parcels for you. There is also the option of using a mail forwarding service, but those are getting harder to operate and harder to find. If you happen to live in a state that borders Canada, getting a PO Box just over the border can be useful.
As you probably know, that's pretty much how open source licenses work. You have the source code, you can do whatever you want with it in house. It's only when you distribute something that the licenses come into play.
Same with any other copyright, really. Technically, they can say it's illegal for me to make copies, but in reality they can't do shit about it unless I'm distributing copyrighted materials.
By the way, I use the word "hoover" a lot in speech. To suck something up, in whatever context. Indeed, google it has become a widely used de-facto verb too :-)
"Just like I have always and always will tell you to go google something. "
I don't. I think Google is an a big pile of evil and abuse and would recommend using a different search engine. On the occasions where I've used Google to search for something and often with DDG, the first couple of pages are likely to be Amazon links. The default assumption is I'm looking to purchase something even if the search terms I use don't match well with the results.
There were originally two different companies with the "Apple" trademark. One in the music publishing business, one in computers.
When Apple Computers originally started selling music, they weren't allowed to use the Apple name, hence they called it iTunes, and didn't include any Apple branding on it.
They later reached some sort of agreement with the other company, and could then call it Apple Music.
It works because the Apple vs Apple dispute was fought over in the courts repeatedly over many years and the situation these days is what the courts decided it would be.
And that's the whole point. Trademarks are what the law defines they are. To say "trademarks don't work that way in open source" is meaningless: if it doesn't work that way, it isn't a trademark, it's just a word and I'm not sure having an elaborate consultation over the voluntary use of random words is a particularly good use of anyone's time.
Now, I sympathise with the article in that I don't think the Rust Foundation should have done as it did. But the thing I believe it did wrong was to have a trademark in the first place. Trademarks are all about exclusivity and control and, indeed, open source isn't supposed to work like that. But the corollary of that is you can't have "The" Rust Foundation: you can have "A" Rust Foundation which is potentially one of many with no specific proprietorial rights.
That isn't going to sit easily with potential funders - how will they know where to direct their money? But you can't have your cake and eat it too.
"That isn't going to sit easily with potential funders "
The funders should think to themselves "what sort of complete fool would brand their thing with a word like 'Rust'". There are enough letters to enable coming up with a name that isn't in common usage. That and "Rust" is generally considered a bad thing.
"how much does that trademurk work these days?"
It worked out pretty well for them. After repeatedly fighting over it, Apple (computers) bought up all the trademark rights from the music people for an undisclosed probably a lot of money. Then they granted the previous owners the right to keep using it. So the previous company still has the right to call themselves Apple, they have exclusivity because the computer company has to defend their own trademarks, they got a pile of money, and they no longer have to get into legal arguments all the time. That sounds like a success to me.
Surely the only rusty thing about some package or another is whether its written using a conforming version of the language.
...and I suppose there's the rub -- is there come kind of conformance test to verify whether my version of the language conforms to an agreed standard? Or am I expecting too much?
That's what they are trying to use the trademark to ensure.
Otherwise some evil corp could take Rust, extend it so it only runs on their OS, release masses of libraries that only work with their version. Encourage teaching their version in college for 'market fit' and your evil corp's open source package has become property of a different evil corp
>That's what they are trying to use the trademark to ensure.
Possibly.
However, if the Rust Foundation were to implement some form of compliance and/or conformance testing, I would expect such products to be able to an appropriate certification of testing mark as per equipment tested to WiFi Alliance profiles. Hence the draft guidelines don't need to
I note that Rust Foundation itself is being an "evil corp" by effectively preventing a third-party Rust language compiler describing itself as a Rust compiler. One of the joys of C was that you had the langauge reference and any one could write a "compiler" for their platform of preference or more importantly create a programmers workbench which uses a modified compiler to create output that more easily integrates with the toolset. Interestingly, the main areas of difference were in the libraries, specifically on those elements not covered by the reference guide (eg. what action to actually perform and result to return when you attempt to move the file pointer beyond the end of the open file.)
From this I think you will understand it is advisable to have separate trademarks for Rust the language and 'products' claim with respect to compliance to, and interoperability with Rust conventions.
I'm not gonna write any articles about it. I'm not gonna start any new projects with it. I will not recommend it to my boss, coworkers, POs or our customers for new projects.
Why? Simple: What guarantee do I have, that there wont be another stunt like that in the future?
It's a nice language. Complicated, but that's because it solves complicated problems. But that is nowhere nearly enough to have me think carefully about application names, domain names, or slapping huge legal disclaimers into my README's or on my website, just in case. And that's for private projects. Try justifying that that to a PO or customer, good luck. If the choice is between that and dealing with a garbage collector, you better believe that I'll let that thing stop the world as often as it wants.
> Why? Simple: What guarantee do I have, that there wont be another stunt like that in the future?
Yeah, but what's the alternative? What guarantee do you have that a.n.other language won't pull a stunt like that in the future?
Linux itself goes in for all this trademark stuff. Would that stop you recommending or using Linux?
The OP's point wasn't about whatever todays documentation might say, it's about the whims of ThoseInCharge and what they might decide the rules become tomorrow.
Said management has demonstrated major cluelessness, and yet they are still in charge. Do you honestly think they have developed a clue? Personally, after many decades of watching management all over the technical world, I seriously doubt it. The OP seems to agree ... and thus isn't going to use the product anymore. It's not worth the risk for the very few benefits it supposedly brings.
Perhaps if they fork it ... forks to get away from bad management are a positive point for FOSS. See Debian/Devuan.
"Did you need any permission from the Linux Foundation to write that comment? Because you would need permission to write a similar comment about the corroded iron language."
That's not how this works at all. It's completely wrong in every detail. Trademarks don't prevent you from commenting on the trademarked item. Windows is a trademark, and Microsoft defends it. That does not now nor did it ever prevent me from saying "I like Windows" or "I hate Windows", or literally anything I want to say about Windows. What it restricts is me trying to sell some software and call it Windows. The same thing is true of the Rust and Linux trademarks, and Rust could have and probably will keep the trademark as they do now but should have described the usage differently.
The Linux trademark, for example, doesn't prevent me from using the word in a comment, or even in a product. It would, however, prevent me from making my own operating system, deciding that I'll call my OS Linux even though it doesn't work with real Linux software, and making money from that. It also prevents me from setting up the "I really make Linux company" and trying to get people to donate to or pay for whatever I claim to be building. I could still lie about being instrumental to Linux, but I have to use an unrelated name because otherwise the Linux foundation can defend their trademark. Rust is likely trying to do the same thing, but in an attempt to make things easier on their lawyers, they advocated a more restrictive usage policy for things related to the language. That was a misstep, but not because trademarks aren't compatible with open source. It was a misstep because they didn't work with the community and they had a lawyer, rather than a technical person, express the policy. Lawyers work in an area of "Don't do that or otherwise bad things will happen", whereas technical people tend to be a lot more open about what bad things and how close to that you can get before they start to happen.
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