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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Quentin,</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:17793b1d776.e67c079d844832.265036043647634214@quentinquaadgras.com">
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt;">
<div><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lato;
font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures:
normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">> What is the urgent problem
being appropriately solved here and why is it</span><br>
</div>
<div><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lato;
font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures:
normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">> something that is within the
limits of the Open Source Definition?</span><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lato;
font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures:
normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">*The Problem*</span><br>
</div>
<div><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lato;
font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures:
normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">Consider the author of a software
project is implicitly branded as (without a registered
trademark) 'AwesomeApp'. ThirdParty makes a copy of this
software and distributes 'AwesomeApp' on a popular app store
so that users misleadingly believe that they are using the
author's version of the project. Perhaps 'AwesomeApp' is
recognized as a brand that is updated regularly, does not
track it's users, etc, ThirdParty copy could be unmaintained
and contain tracking software. Alternatively, perhaps this
modified version of 'AwesomeApp' is hosted on a cloud
service by ThirdParty and sold as a service to users. Users
may believe the service is using the authors version and
does not track them . This type of brand confusion hurts
both the copyright holders and the users. Filing an
international trademark is too expensive for the author at
this time.</span><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>You've outlined the form that a problem could take, but you've
not provided sufficient empirical data to determine that a problem
actually exists, let alone to evaluate its impact. If you elect to
submit an updated version of the license, I'd suggest obtaining
and including in the rationale empirical, quantitative data on
these impacts on authors and users, to the extent that it's
available.<br>
</p>
<p>OSI faces a serious problem with license proliferation, at least
because the more approved licenses we have:</p>
<ul>
<li>the more work <b>every single open source project</b>
selecting amongst OSI approved licenses has to undertake in
selecting an appropriate license;</li>
<li>the more complicated the approval process becomes because of
the need to compare with a larger body of existing licenses; and</li>
<li>the greater the risk of harmful licenses slipping under the
radar because of the spreading of review resource more thinly.</li>
</ul>
There has to be a real problem (material ongoing harm) to warrant
incurring these costs.<br>
<p>As Pamela points out, this is not a workshop or educational
forum, it is the input to OSI's formal approval process. If you
elect to submit an updated version of the license, you might
consider developing it in cooperation with lawyers with
professional competence in copyright law, trademark law, and
torts[1] and at least some concrete experience with open source
licensing.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>- Roland</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>1: I suspect that you are barking up the wrong tree entirely. So
far as I can tell, the lack of formal protection for unregistered
trademarks doesn't mean that the scenario that you propose is
realistic, as the common law protections still apply, but
correctly characterising the tradeoffs requires legal expertise
that I lack.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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