Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/13/unpaid-tradeoff.html

I read with
interest Ashe
Dryden’s blog post entitled The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS
Community⁰, and I
agree with much of it. At least, I agree with Dryden much more than I
agree with

Hanson’s blog post that inspired Dryden’s, since Hanson’s seems almost
completely unaware of the distinctions between Free Software funding in
non-profit and for-profit settings, and I
think Dryden’s
criticism that Hanson’s view is narrowed by “white-male in a wealthy
country” privilege is quite accurate. I think Dryden does
understand the distinctions of non-profit vs. for-profit Free Software
development, and Dryden’s has an excellent discussion on how wealthy and
powerful individuals by default have more leisure time to enter the (likely
fictional) Free Software development meritocracy via pure volunteer
efforts.

However, I think two key points remain missing in the discussions so far
on this topic. Specifically, (a) the issue of license design as it relates
to non-monetary compensation of volunteer efforts and (b) developers’ goals
in using volunteer Free Software labor to bootstrap employment. The two
issues don’t interrelate that much, so I’ll discuss them separately.

Copyleft Requirements as “Compensation” For Volunteer
Contribution

I’m not surprised that this discussion about volunteer vs. paid labor is
happening completely bereft of reference to the licenses of the software in
question. With companies and even many individuals so rabidly anti-copyleft
recently, I suspect that everyone in the discussion is assuming that the
underlying license structure of these volunteer contributions is
non-copyleft.

Strong copyleft’s design, however, deals specifically with
the problems inherent in uncompensated volunteer labor. By avoiding the
possibility of proprietary derivatives, copyleft ensures that volunteer
contributions do have, for lack of a better term, some strings attached:
the requirement that even big and powerful companies that use the code
treat the lowly volunteer contributor as a true equal.

Companies have resources that allows them to quickly capitalize on
improvements to Free Software contributed by volunteers, and thus the
volunteers are always at an economic disadvantage. Requiring that the
companies share improvements with the community ensures that the volunteers’
labor don’t go entirely uncompensated: at the very least, the volunteer
contributor has equal access to all improvements.

This phenomenon is in my opinion an argument for why there is less risk
and more opportunity for contributors to copylefted codebases. Copyleft
allows for some level of opportunity to the volunteer contributor that
doesn’t necessarily exist with non-copylefted codebases (i.e., the
contributor is assured equal access to later improvements), and certainly
doesn’t exist with proprietary software.

Volunteer Contribution As Employment Terms-Setting

An orthogonal issue is this trend that employers use Free Software
contribution as a hiring criterion. I’ve frankly found this trend
disturbing for a wholly different reason than those raised in the current
discussed. Namely, most employers who hire based on past Free Software
contribution don’t employ these developers to work on Free
Software!

Free Software is, frankly, in a state of cooption. (Open Source itself, as
a concept, is part of that cooption.) As another part of that cooption,
teams of proprietary software (or non-released, secret software) developers
use methodologies and workflows that were once unique to Free Software.
Therefore, these employers want to know if job candidates know those
workflows and methodologies so that the employer can pay the developer
to stop using those techniques for the good of software
freedom and instead use them for proprietary and/or secretive
software development.

When I was in graduate school, one of the reasons I keenly wanted to be a
core contributor to Free Software was not to just get paid for any
software development, but specifically to gain employment writing software
that would be Free Software. In those days, you picked a
codebase you liked because you wanted to be employed to work on that
upstream codebase. In fact, becoming a core contributor for a widely
used copylefted codebase was once commonly a way to ensure you’d have
your pick of jobs being paid to work on that codebase.

These days, most developers, even though they are required to use some
Free Software as part of their jobs, usually are assigned work on some
non-Free Software that interacts with that Free Software. Thus,
the original meme, that began in the early 1990s, of volunteer
for a Free Software codebase so you can later get paid to work on it,
has recently morphed into volunteer to work on Free Software so you can get a job
working on some proprietary software. That practice is a complete
corruption and cooption of the Free Software culture.

All that said, I do agree with Dryden that we should do more
funding at the entry-level of Free Software development, and the
internships in particular, such as those through
the OPW are,
as Dryden writes, absolutely essential to solve the obvious problem of
under-representation by those with limited leisure time for volunteer
contribution. I think such funding is best when it’s done as part of a
non-profit rather than a for-profit settings, for reasons that would
require yet another blog post to explain.

⁰Please
note that I haven’t seen any of the comments on Dryden’s blog post or many of the
comments that spawned it, because as near as I can tell, I can’t use Disqus
without installing proprietary software on my computer, through its
proprietary Javascript. If someone can tell me how to read Disqus
discussions without proprietary Javascript, I’d appreciate it.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2013/11/08/trademark-aggression.html

I was disturbed to read that Canonical, Ltd.’s trademark aggression, which
I’ve been vaguely aware of for some time, has reached a new height. And, I
say this as someone who regularly encourages Free Software projects to
register trademarks, and to occasionally do trademark enforcement and also
to actively avoid project policies that might lead to
naked
licensing. Names matter, and Free Software projects should strive to
strike a careful balance between assuring that names mean what they are
supposed to mean, and also encourage software sharing and modification at
the same time.

However, Canonical, Ltd.’s behavior shows what happens when lawyers and
corporate marketing run amok and fail to strike that necessary balance.
Specifically, Canonical, Ltd. sent a
standard
cease and desist (C&D) letter to Micah F. Lee, for
running fixubuntu.com, a site that
clearly to any casual reader is not affiliated with
Canonical, Ltd. or its Ubuntu® project. In fact, the site is specifically telling you how
to undo some anti-privacy stuff that Canonical, Ltd. puts
into its Ubuntu, so there is no trademark-governed threat to its Ubuntu branding.
Lee fortunately got legal assistance from the EFF, who
wrote
a letter explaining why Canonical, Ltd. was completely wrong.

Anyway, this sort of bad behavior is so commonplace by Canonical,
Ltd. that I’d previously decided to stop talking about when it reached the
crescendo
of Mark
Shuttleworth calling me a McCarthyist because of my Free Software beliefs
and work. But, one comment on Micah’s blog inspired me to comment
here. Specifically, Jono Bacon, who leads Ubuntu’s PR division under the
dubious title of Community Manager,
asks
this insultingly naïve question as a comment on Micah’s blog: Did
you raise your concerns the team who sent the email?.

I am sure that Jono knows well what a C&D letter is and what one looks
like. I also am sure that he knows that any lawyer would advise Micah to
not engage with an adverse party on his own over an issue of
trademark dispute without adequate legal counsel. Thus, for Jono to
suggest that there is some Canonical, Ltd. “team” that Micah
should be talking to not only pathetically conflates Free Software
community operations with corporate legal aggression, but also seem like a
Canonical, Ltd. employee subtly suggesting that those who receive C&D’s
from Canonical, Ltd.’s legal departments should engage in discussion
without seeking their own legal counsel.

Free Software projects should get trademarks of their
own. Indeed, I fully support that and I encourage for folks interested in
this issue to listen to Pam
Chestek’s excellent talk on the topic at FOSDEM 2013 (which Karen Sandler
and I broadcast on Free as in Freedom). However, true Free
Software communities don’t try to squelch Free Speech that criticizes their
projects. It’s deplorable that Canonical, Ltd. has an organized campaign
between their lawyers and their public relations folks like Jono to (a)
send aggressive C&D letters to Free Software enthusiasts who criticize
Ubuntu and (b) follow up on those efforts by subtly shaming those who
lawyer-up upon receiving that C&D.

I should finally note that Canonical, Ltd. has an inappropriate and
Orwellian predilection for coopting words our community (including the word
“community” itself, BTW). Most people don’t know that I myself
registered the domain name canonical.org back on 1999-08-06 (when
Shuttleworth was still running Thawte) for a group of friends who liked to
use the word canonical in the canonical way, and still do so today.
However, thanks to Shuttleworth, it’s difficult
to use canonical
in the canonical way anymore in Free Software circles, because
Shuttleworth coopted the term and brand-markets on top of it. Ubuntu, for
its part, is a word
meaning human
kindness that Shuttleworth has also coopted for his often unkind
activities.

Update at 16:17 on
2013-11-08: Canonical, Ltd. has posted a response regarding their
enforcement action, which claims that their trademark policy
is unusually permissive. This is true if the universe is
“all trademark policies in the world”, but it is false if the
universe is “Open Source and Free Software trademark
policies”. Of course, like any good spin doctors, Canonical, Ltd. doesn’t
actually say this explicitly.

Similarly, Canonical, Ltd. restates the oft-over-simplified claim
that in trademark law a mark owner is expected to protect the authenticity
of a trademark otherwise they risk losing the mark. What they don’t tell
you is why they believe failure to enforce in this specific instance against
fixubuntu.com had specific risk. Why didn’t they tell us that?: because it
doesn’t. I suspect they could have simply asked for the disclaimer that
Micah gave them willingly, and that would have satisfied the aforementioned
risk adequately.