For approval: ENCUL

[John Cowan]

Mark Shewmaker scripsit:

> OSI abandoned an application for a registered trademark, but you don't
> have to register a trademark to own a trademark, it's just not as strong
> a claim.  (I do wish they'd make another go of official registration
> anyway--especially since they've now been applying the mark in commerce
> for more than 5 years.)

Expensive and futile, since "open source" is clearly a descriptive mark and
as such not subject to protection, any more than "software" is.

> In any event, as people generally look to OSI as owning the "Open
> Source" term, I would think that if a company claims something is Open
> Source where OSI says it's not, then that company would get lots of
> horrible publicity and be widely viewed as being dishonest.

Would that it were so.  AT&T has been calling Plan 9 "open source" for
some time.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
        --Brian K. Reid
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