Re: Never ever use word BitKeeper if Larry does not like you

Mike Galbraith
2003-03-14T20:57:34Z

At 08:37 AM 3/14/2003 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > Check with your lawyers again, since Red Hat has posted in the past that
> > > 'similar' namings would be chased after. I think the example they
> used was
> > > 'Pink Fedora'.
> >
> > Having a product name "confusingly similar" to another one _is_ grounds
> > for trademark action. See Lindows, Mobilix etc. (And yes, of course,
> > it's a very subjective thing in many cases.)

product?

> > But simply comparing one product to another is not the same.
> >
> > I'd expect using a name like "BitBucket" to be much more at risk of
> > being a trademark infringement than merely claiming that a project "aims
> > to be BitKeeper compatible" or "can read BitKeeper repositories."
>
>But it can't read BK repositories in many cases. We support compressed
>repositories, it can't read those. We support many corner cases which
>SCCS didn't handle, it can't read those. It can't reproduce all of the
>extensions that we have added. In other words, saying what Pavel has
>is like BitKeeper is like saying cat is like Word because they both read
>data off of disk.

Trivial marketing issue then.

> That's the whole point. If we sit back and let people think that he has
>something remotely similar to BK, it devalues BitKeeper in the mind of
>those people. Since this is a very complex system with lots of subtle
>features, people easily get confused. What Pavel has doesn't approach
>the functionality of CVS, let alone BitKeeper, yet he is describing it
>as a BitKeeper clone. If we allow that, we're just shooting our brand
>name dead.

Do you really think that your customers/potential customers are that
stupid? Is your marketing department so inept that they cannot compete
with something which by your own words is not even _close_ to being
equivalent? Remember, you have repeatedly touted the man-years of effort
involved in replication of BK functionality.

You are (sadly) making a complete _ass_ of yourself. If someone comes up
with a functional clone of BK, that's tough shit. You don't have to help
them, and you are free to hinder them in any way law permits.

In closing, I must say that you aren't the only one pissing me the fsck
off. I'm sick and tired of the entire thread[s]. As long as I can get at
the source, I couldn't give a fsck less what Linus or anybody else likes to
use. As long as tarballs exist and as long as patches hit this list, I'm a
happy camper.

Bah humbug, color me disappointed. I guess I need to start filtering my mail.

-Mike