[vickychijwani]

I believe this is their HN profile, see for yourself (as indicated by comments from them in this thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ahachete

Personally I'm interested in hearing more from them, as they don't fit the "trademark troll" description that commenters seem to be taking for granted here. Seeing some interesting discussion dynamics at play.

[mbreese]

At the same time though, they aren't playing the role of good community citizen either. It's really confusing to see what the motivations are here.

Why openly antagonize a community that you claim to be a part of and represent? I hope there is more to it, but otherwise, this just seems like a stunt.

Surely @ahachete must realize that the Postgres Core team must defend their trademarks (otherwise they can be lost or lose protection). And either way, I just don't see the endgame here.

[vickychijwani]

Yes I'm a bit confused about their motivations too. Sharing what I've pieced together so far (and trying to approach this from a good-faith perspective):

My understanding so far is that they run a Postgres consulting firm [1], and it appears they took the liberty of registering a Postgres trademark for the class of "professional services" in order to (I presume) protect fair use by their firm and (they claim in their response) by others in the Postgres community.

Some of this is admittedly speculation on my part, and I'm trying to take a charitable view of their actions to try to understand why a community member would do this.

That said I have no opinion on whether this action is net good for the community, and I'm not a Postgres user so I have no horse in this race. It's just the social dynamics of this situation that are interesting to me.

[1]: https://ongres.com/about-us/#team

[ahachete]

Actually, IMHO, it's the Core team + PAC + PEU who have acted in bad faith.

As the post states, with dates, there has never been any communication from them to discuss this matter. Only through laywers, since day 0. Even some of them, long-time personal friends of mine, where shut of and were banned to communicate even at a personal level. Not even with laywers present.

There was no need to make all this public. This clearly hurts the Community.

As the post says, there's no explanation to why PEU, who is as legit as any other non-profit Postgres association, including Fundación PostgreSQL, can hold trademarks and not being sued and publicly bashed.

If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación? Conversely: if there should be one trademark holder (and we agree, read the proposal we submitted to them which got no reply!) then it should be a legal entity with more solid grounds than current Core's Group (which has no legal entity behind) or PAC, which is a quite opaque association too.

[kbenson]

> As the post states, with dates, there has never been any communication from them to discuss this matter. Only through laywers, since day 0. Even some of them, long-time personal friends of mine, where shut of and were banned to communicate even at a personal level. Not even with laywers present.

That's sort of a nonsensical take. Of course people with any sort of connection to the other side would be advised not to speak to you without a lawyer, and not to speak with a lawyer if they had nothing legally relevant to add. Your actions with regard to copyright were legal in nature, you should expect a legal response.

I think the very valid question in this is were you contacted in 2020 and told to cease and desist using a legal trademark by the current owners, and did you fail to do so? If that's true, I'm not sure what defense you have. As I see it, the only responsible action at that time if you really care about the issues you raise would be to cease and desist and open an dialogue that is not subject to legal proceedings and their need to defend their copyright lest they lose it.

> there should be one trademark holder (and we agree, read the proposal we submitted to them which got no reply!) then it should be a legal entity with more solid grounds than current Core's Group (which has no legal entity behind) or PAC, which is a quite opaque association too.

That's not for you to decide. The correct way to go about that is not to make the holding entity and then try to surreptitiously acquire the trademark, but to have approached the community first. Did you approach the community prior to attempting to take over an aspect of their management and holdings, or not? If you did, what was the response?

[ahachete]

> The correct way to go about that is not to make the holding entity and then try to surreptitiously acquire the trademark, but to have approached the community first. Did you approach the community prior to attempting to take over an aspect of their management and holdings, or not? If you did, what was the response?

Yes, this is the case. Indeed, many times. I have personally voiced many concerns about different aspects of the governance and workings of the Community. And in 2019 a very clear and significant case was raised when some dispute over IP (a domain name) surfaced. In this case, we declined used of the domain name following Core's request, but raised --again-- concerns over the governance of Postgres.

The answer to all of these requests? Outright denial. Silence. Nada. There is no willing to change anything. Also one year later I voiced some of these concerns publicly (https://postgresql.fund/blog/is-it-time-to-modernize-postgre...). Same outcome.

So yes, I have at a personal level and we have at the Foundation level tried everything we believed could be done. And we perceived trademarks are more at risk with PAC and PEU than us, and we saw that some were not registered, so we proceeded to protect them and offer them openly to the Postgres Community (https://postgresql.fund/trademarks).

And as stated publicly, we're ready to transfer them to a single entity. It just can't be the current ones.

[kbenson]

> we declined used of the domain name following Core's request, but raised --again-- concerns over the governance of Postgres.

So does the community agree with your stance? A majority of them? Or are you forcing your opinion on the majority by taking action in their name without knowing their stance on the subject?

I have to be honest, it's hard to understand what makes you think you've the right to make these demands of the the community and the leadership. Perhaps it's all much more obvious to someone with more knowledge of the situation, or if you put forth more info that you assume people know, but from the outside nothing you've stated really makes your actions sound justified to my eyes.

> And as stated publicly, we're ready to transfer them to a single entity. It just can't be the current ones.

Honestly, this just sounds like you're holding something hostage and arguing in bad faith. "Sure we'll give back what we took, just not to you because we don't like you, which is why we took it, so designate someone else and we promise we'll give your stuff to them."

[mbreese]

> Only through laywers

Of course they will only talk via lawyers! That's what they have to do to make sure that all communication is clear, documented, and not misinterpreted (by either party). Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

And as soon as this escalates to a lawsuit, the existence of the dispute will be public.

>If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación?

No one is saying that they/you can't hold trademarks. You just can't register ones that would be confusing to the public (which is the purpose of trademarks -- to avoid public confusion). And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing.

From the PostgreSQL EU website (as linked by you), these are their specific trademarks:

PGConf, PGDay, Postgres Conference, PostgreSQL Conference

These don't seem to be confusing about what the database itself is called, or how the project is managed. Trying to trademark "PostgreSQL" and "PostgreSQL Community" is way too confusing with respect to the primary project. You're basically trying to take over the global naming rights for the entire project. Whatever the relationship is between Postgres Core and PostgreSQL EU (and it is a bit opaque), that's not for you to judge and it has no bearing on what rights you feel Fundación has to the trademark "Postgres" or "PostgreSQL".

One reason why you're getting slammed so hard on this is that these have been hard learned lessons in the FOSS community over the past few decades. Trademarks are one of the few FOSS-compatible ways to protect projects, names, and publicity -- especially against commercial entities that may not have the best intentions. They must be defended in order to protect these projects.

And I'm sorry, but the global stability of the Postgres project is far more important than whatever good intentions you had.

[ahachete]

> Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers.

So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied.

> And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing.

That domain is held by PostreSQL Europe. So according to your argument, they shouldn't hold it.

> From the PostgreSQL EU website (as linked by you), these are their specific trademarks:

That they are more or less confusing is something I may agree with. But I don't see why it may change the subject matter: if the agreement would be that only a single entity would hold them, so be it. PEU can't definitely do that, under no circumstance.

"Funnily" enough, PEU is also one of the entities suing Fundación in the courts. Indeed, on the very first letter, as our post mentions, they are presented with PAC as if they were part of the same: "in representation of both the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada and PostgreSQL Europe ("individually and collectively")".

So your argument that PEU's are not confusing is not what is at stakes here. It is that two entities, unrelated and separated, want to be the steward of the trademarks in Postgres. And if a third one tries to help, covering some observed gaps, it is sued by both. That is potentially collusion.

> And I'm sorry, but the global stability of the Postgres project is far more important than whatever good intentions you had.

I agree. But then why https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/trademark-actions-agai... is posted publicly? If the matter is in the courts (as it is), why is it needed to bring it publicly? We're happy to defend ourselves in private and in the public if needed, but I don't see what they win by this, and I see how it goes against the whole Community.

I'm sure you have read in our post that "The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer, permanently and irrevocably, all domain names, trademarks and other IP assets to the new NPO. New, clear and non discretionary rules will be established to allow fair use of the PostgreSQL trademarks by any stakeholder.". So it's not that we're unwilling to transfer the trademarks to the "Community". It's just that we disagree what the governing bodies of that community should be, believing that the current ones are a great liability and need urgent reform.

Of course, they don't want reform, so they chose to bash us publicly when the matter is in the courts. Who's harming the Community then? Are the trademarks currently registered by Fundación not offered to the public, with indeed less restrictions than PAC and PEU's? (https://postgresql.fund/trademarks).

[petergeoghegan]

> The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer...

The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.

I have been working on Postgres (primarily as a Postgres backend hacker) for over a decade now. The people from the first two groups are friends and colleagues. There are problems, but on the whole these people have a significant amount of moral authority for good reasons. They have at least gotten us this far.

The idea that one of the first two organizations from your list are at risk of going rogue is beyond ludicrous. There are certainly legitimate criticisms that one could make about the project's governance, but this isn't one of them.

> It's just that we disagree what the governing bodies of that community should be, believing that the current ones are a great liability and need urgent reform.

This is not reform. This is a clumsily executed power grab.

[arp242]

> > Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

> But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers.

> So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied.

The problem with not doing it through a lawyer is that you might inadvertently say something that could disadvantage you later on if things go to court. The value a lawyer offers here is that they're familiar with all the ins and outs of the relevant laws, and which words may or may not carry meaning if it goes to court.

In many ways it's a lose-lose situation: going through a lawyer can come off as cold, distant, and even threatening, but not doing so risks screwing yourself over. Since they don't really know you or your motivations, going through a lawyer is clearly the best option. Especially when dealing with a bad-faith actor who might do their best to twist words it can really cover yourself. You might say "of course I would never do that!" and I fully believe you're honest in that, but PostgreSQL people have no way of knowing that, not for sure anyway.

So my advice would be to not take that it went through a lawyer as "un-amicable conversation"; it's just how these things work. Maybe it shouldn't, but it is.

As for the actual meat of the matter: I read your reply on your website and some of your posts here, but I don't really understand what advantage to the wider PostgreSQL community if Fundación PostgreSQL has any trademarks, and only see potential risks. Who knows what will happen with those trademarks in five, ten, or twenty years? You could get hit by a bus tomorrow and whoever ends up in control of the foundation could be a Bad Guy™ or (possibly inadvertently) transfer the trademarks to such a person.

It seems to me that the most logical place to put the trademark is with the same people we trust with the code, and I don't see why we should trust them with the code but not the trademarks?

[exikyut]

Thanks for this info.

The way I read/understand this comment is that

1) you took the cue of PEU registering trademarks in Europe to take the initiative and set up shop in Spain with the visibility of a locally-held trademark by a carefully-chosen representational entity (foundation)

and then

2) there has never been an opportunity to have an open-ended conversation about the events in (1).

Without further context (which may completely derail my theory and leave me very disoriented :) ), I get the impression that the other organization(s) were not expecting any of this to take place, and have subsequently reacted to it as though it were a threat.

If there *was* prior communication/discussion/negotiation, then I have no idea why they're responding like this.

[kgwxd]

Feels a lot like the Freenode story. Still not sure what the endgame is/was there either, but the outcome certainly wasn't great for the community.

[mbreese]

I had the same thought. I don't think it's exactly the same story, but I think that it has the potential in the future. Even assuming the current parties are all operating with good intentions, if Postgres (proper) doesn't defend their trademarks, there is potential for risk in the future.

What happens if Fundación goes bankrupt and the assets (trademarks) get bought? What if they are bought by a non-benevolent company? Then we have the potential for Freenode all over again.

[xaviersierra]

In the case of Spain, if a foundation bankrupts their assets can only be transferred to another non profit organization. It's against the Spanish law for a company to buy a assets of a foundation

[janc_]

I really doubt that’s true. It would mean that a foundation that owns any goods (buildings, rolling stock, etc.) would not be able to sell them, ever, except to other non-profits.

Are there any non-profit car wrecking companies in Spain?

[ahachete]

I hope this clarifies our point: https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post...

[shkkmo]

It seems like an necessarily combative headline that conflates your relatively unknown non-profit with the whole community.

If your goal is genuinely to improve the legal and governence situation of the postgres community, this seems to be am extremely poor way of doing that.