Re: Git trademark status and policy

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sep 18, 2018, 18:22 UTC
Message-ID: <20180918182222.GA24448@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UFD2cC7VMu7Zp9NaXj4x0BMBPZ5CJ6prwEv+s24SuNG=7JA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 11:25:31AM +0200, Christian Couder wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> > (Also, to be clear, this is all _only_ about "Git Cola". The "git-cola"
> > command is explicitly OK in the policy because that's how commands
> > work).
> 
> I agree about "git-cola" though I wonder about "git-dag" as this is
> another command used by the project that is more generic. For example
> I could imagine that, if we wanted to provide a shortcut for `git log
> --graph --decorate --oneline`, we might want to use `git dag`.
> 
> I guess we can still recommend to change it if possible, though we can
> also acknowledge that, as our recommendation comes very late (too
> late?), it is just a "weak" recommendation.

Yeah, I agree with you, though I think it is a separate issue. "git-dag" is explicitly OK in the trademark policy, and they are not using "Git Dag" in any recognizable way.

So I think there is no trademark issue, but "git-dag" is probably just not a great idea in general, because the namespace is open and it is likely to get stomped by some other project. Or git itself. Or it may even be annoying for users who have a "git dag" alias (on-disk commands always override aliases).

So I think we should generally recommend against such generic names during the naming phase. At this point, I'm not sure the pain of changing now is any less than the pain of changing later if and when there's a conflict.

I think I'm actually violently agreeing with you, but I wanted to make it clear. :) (And everything else in your email seemed sensible, too).

-Peff