[Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]

[John Cowan]

Craig Muth scripsit:

> I must confess to some ignorance in this area.  I'd thought the term
> predated the OSI.  

Not by much.  The term was coined in February of 1988 and the OSI
founded the following November.

> >From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software :
> >Perens attempted to register "open source" as a service mark for the
> >OSI, but that attempt was impractical by trademark standards.
> 
> Does anyone know the details of why this attempt failed?

Basically because it's too close to being a descriptive mark which
is not particularly associated with any one company.  Microsoft's
"Windows" trademark is also dangerously close to the line; when
they settled with Linspire over the use of "Lindows", Microsoft
ended up paying Linspire rather than risking the loss of the trademark.

-- 
John Cowan  cowan at ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
        --Brian K. Reid