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by pwdisswordfish9 1481 days ago
The name needs to change.

This tool commits the cardinal sin of choosing a name GitSomething, where Git is only incidental to the domain that the product is concerned with (notetaking) and which is made worse by being yet another project that says "Git" where what it means is "we're using the GitHub API".

> You may not use the Marks in the following ways:

...

> In any way that indicates that Git favors one distribution, platform, product, etc. over another except where explicitly indicated in writing by Conservancy.

...

> In addition, you may not use any of the Marks as a syllable in a new word or as part of a portmanteau (e.g., "Gitalicious", "Gitpedia") used as a mark for a third-party product or service without Conservancy's written permission. For the avoidance of doubt, this provision applies even to third-party marks that use the Marks as a syllable or as part of a portmanteau to refer to a product or service's use of Git code.

http://git-scm.com/about/trademark

> Let's say as an example that it does backups. We'd prefer it not call itself GitBackups. We don't endorse it, and it's just using the name to imply association that isn't there. You can come up with similar hypotheticals: GitMail that stores mailing list archives in Git, or GitWiki that uses Git as a backing store.

https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

What's also notable is that it conflicts with what is permitted: 'Commands like "git-foo" (so you run it as "git foo") are generally OK. This is Git's well-known extension mechanism[...]' When "git-foo" exists, we've approved "Git Foo" as a matching project name'. This combined with the fact that Git itself already ships with the "git-notes" command baked right in...

2 comments

How do GitHub and Gitlab get away with this? Have they been given permission by Conservancy? Or are they in violation?
IIRC GitHub, (BitBucket), and GitLab existed before this new (license-addendum?) Trademark policy; but may be wrong. Which is to say that I don't recall there having been such a trademark policy at the time. Isn't it actually the "Old BSD License" that retains the "may not spaketh the name" clause?

(Bitcoin is also originally a LF project; in Git, like BitTorrent, and similar to BitGold only in name, for a reason. Bitcoin initially lacked a Foundation to hold trademarks, in particular.)

The choosealicense.com table of licenses in the appendix is a service of GitHub, and GitLab also donates free CI build runner minutes for Open Source projects: https://choosealicense.com/appendix/#trademark-use :

> Trademark use

> This license explicitly states that it does NOT grant trademark rights, even though licenses without such a statement probably do not grant any implicit trademark rights.

> IIRC GitHub, (BitBucket), and GitLab existed before this new (license-addendum?) Trademark policy

Trademarks are like copyright licenses where if you haven't been given explicit permission, then you don't have any. (The difference is that you can lose your trademark if you don't actively police misuse, but that's beside the point.)

Speak in complete sentences.
Read the cited sources. They were grandfathered in.

(GitHub is a good example of why the policy exists. They borrowed liberally from Git's brand; conflated Git and github.com in the minds of tens of thousands of people, maybe even millions, registered a trademark for "GitHub"; and began going after people who do the very type of borrowing that GitHub themselves did. They ultimately ended up causing issues for the Git project when it sought a trademark, since the GitHub trademark already existed at that point.)

Essentially explained by the timing of Git adopting this policy (and actually having a trademark to enforce): https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...
thanks for pointing out. I'll change the name.