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Renaming the project to protect it legally (continued) #759
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I have to assume the organization "ungoogled-software" will be renamed to "uncloudium" then, right? Or is that going to end up being "uncloudium-software"? EDIT: I would just like to know because I am currently doing that first one right now. |
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@tangalbert919 Yes, |
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I want to express my dissagreement even if no one else does (though 71% are against too! ???). I think poll wasn't set up well and unintentionally allowed to disadvantage other suggestions. I am askinking you to reconsider @Eloston and make a new voting poll rather than picking a name that has only 16% of votes. Please consider that 71% of people don't like it either. When more people voted for option other than uncloudium and detachium they should have been immediately replaced with other names with most votes in this case Pristine and Ferrochrome and so on if those would be again outvoted by "other", but those two were and still are there as only two options even thought 71% voted against them. I think problem was that many people probably voted for their own suggestion not clearly knowing all available, otherwise they might have voted differently. For example I voted for my own suggestion Chromite but than when I saw results I also voted for Pristine because I liked it and multiple options were allowed. |
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Also there is a company called Cloudium Software https://cloudium.io and https://cloudium.net - so I am not sure if it won't cause any legal trouble. |
Simply: Because an answer to such question has no legal value. Only a license can protect the licensee. Also considering that Google's license already forbids using the name Google, that question actually has an answer. So your interpretation of "waste of time" is quite wrong because if Google decides to cause trouble the whole project may be destroyed and then the wasted time will be the whole time @Eloston and others have spend on the project. Of course wasted time would not be the only issue because there will surely be legal penalties. So @yilmi I would recommend you familiarize yourself with legal matters a little bit before making grand conclusions about "killing the project" or "great waste of time". |
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@emanruse I'm curious how this would go if they ever did take legal action. "Google" is trademarked, but "google", "googled" and/or "googling" are listed as verbs on the following dictionaries:
It might seem like semantics, but the casing and word type is what would be scrutinized. I know I'm late to this renaming party, but I really loved the name "Unobtainium" that @thermatk settled on for a similiar project that wanted to unblob the Android version of Chromium -- https://github.com/thermatk/Unobtainium |
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@nikolowry
I am not curious about what legal action may result in. In fact I wish we never find out (otherwise I wouldn't suggest the renaming).
Playing with letter case and decorations around the main word is not a game to play with one of the biggest companies in the world. That's why my suggestion was to name it Zero:
- a word which is very unlikely to be reserved by anyone because it is a number
- it reflects perfectly the zero unwanted connections essence of this project
- it is also opposite to the megalomaniac googol/google
- short and easy to remember
But of course @Eloston as a creator of this project has the full right to name it to his liking. We must all respect that. My only concern with renaming is to protect this excellent work from potential attacks.
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I believe that if they want the project to stop using this name they will kindly ask for it
If Google could be so kind and if their words meant something there would be no need for ungoogling their products, no Dragonfly scandals or other things (PRISM, military, political etc). So if this should be truly ungoogled then it should not dependent on Google in any way, including on its benevolence.
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What about |
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Well, at least we can cheat a little and use |
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hello, i'm just a big nobody, well anyways, that name is horrible, please don't |
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Hi @Eloston , I'd like to make the argument that, on top of this being a bit too hastily, it really isn't necessary, you don't have any commercial stakes in the project. And my last point is that "ungoogled" has the merit of being explicit, instead of uncloudium, unobtainium etc... |
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I'd like to make the argument that, on top of this being a bit too hastily, it really isn't necessary, you don't have any commercial stakes in the project.
You mean apart of obviously opposing one of the biggest commercial names in the world?
@23rd really pointed this out, youtube-dl has been around for litteraly AGES (from the Github API, since 2010-10-31....) so no point in worrying too much.
The big question here is - are you going to protect @Eloston in court in an unfortunate case that is necessary. It is quite irresponsible to recommend being in a gray area just because there are many others in that area when a potential problem wouldn't affect you but someone else.
And my last point is that "ungoogled" has the merit of being explicit, instead of uncloudium, unobtainium etc...
I'd really suggest just finding another adjective/adverb like "untracked"-chromium, "pure"-chromium.
Try selling a drink named "antiCocaCola" or a computer named "noIntelzInside" and see what happens (especially when many will like it).
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Please setup a new non biased voting poll without those two default options that will also include all suggestions from the old poll. There must be more and better names than ucnloudium which you can like too @Eloston. Better compromise for everyone. Hope you reconsider. |
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To make things clear, I don't really care what name we end up choosing for this project. All I really care about is dealing with the legal issue, and settling on something you guys can agree on. At this time, I will suspend the rename until you guys can settle on a solution. If that doesn't happen, I will stick to uncloudium. (I believe we can all agree that uncloudium is legally safer than ungoogled-chromium, while still being a unique name.) @nunbit The voting manipulation happened because there was no mechanism in place to prevent re-voting. The mechanisms provided are not good solutions either. A better poll would require authentication with GitHub, but there are no existing solutions for that. |
Eloston
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@yilmi
If you are against renaming the project the only question is:
Can you provide a legal reference proving that keeping the current name protects the project and the developer just the same as renaming it to something safe?
Without such factual proof anyone can have all kinds of opinions and "2 cents" flippant disagreements but none of them can protect the project because legal matters are about facts and proofs, not about opinions. And the text of Chromium's license is a fact.
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Thank you @Eloston for your answer and decision. So as you can all see people Eloston is up for a compromise so please stop arguing here about need for renaming the project and nonproductive comments, you won't achieve anything - maybe quite opposite. That question is out of a table and we don't need filthy word as google to be associated with this browser anyway, enough that this is a fork. Let's do something productive, I believe many of you have better skills than arguing. I found these maybe useful resources someone could use for poll: |
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I spent some time looking into this and hope what I've found will be of some use to some of you. A lot of the information comes from http://fossmarks.org/. I was really happy to have found them because it meant I could delete my frankenstein mishmash of copy-pasta and you get to understand what this is all about! The FOSSmarks repo is here and the authors here. I've kept my own input to a minimum to avoid making a mistake and instead briefly quoted from the FOSSmarks site. It's important that you fully read the guide in order to grasp the concepts below and that you understand that context is important.
Here FOSSmarks explains that in some cases a company might not take action at all:
The following resources refer to actual cases argued in court. I found the case regarding Nominative Use to be most relevant here. The Open Source Casebook, found on Google Open Source refers to cases of trademark use and misuse in open source.
A case involving Mozilla: Mozilla's trademark enforcement experience
I found the Mozilla Trademark Guidelines to be an excellent resource as the entire policy is human readable and it covers Firefox which helps in this particular case. I've also seen mentioned in the comments that the project will be destroyed or that there will be penalties should Google get involved. I'm sure If it ever got to that point it would be over something larger than just the name. Even so, after reading all the information above it's pretty safe to assume you will be contacted by Google before any drastic measures are taken. edit: it may help to add a disclaimer so it is clear that this is not a Google endorsed/official project. The following disclaimer is from the Google Open Source release documentation and it is required by Google that all Googlers add this to their projects.
Here's an example of a Googler using a disclaimer: autogen
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I disagree. Considering the fact that the main source of income for Google are ads: Think about why Google tries to control the web standards over Mozilla and their recent efforts to change Chrome API to prevent uBlock Origin from being able to block ads. |
@wchen342 Would you mind elaborating on this please? I think you have this backwards. |
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Today I looked at chrome://version/
It shows (top right):
"Copyright 2019 The Chromium Authors. All rights reserved."
I wonder what "All rights reserved" means considering that a FOSS software is copyleft and permissive.
Perhaps a deeper research is needed and actual questions put directly to "The Chromium Authors".
It is a good idea to change the logo too (and perhaps other "artwork" which may be potentially subject to copyright).
Overall this issue and #756 look like one common thing.
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Let me ask just one quick question, can the developers of the project spend the $XXX,XXX USD just to hire the lawyers to START defending against a lawsuit if Google decides to sue? If they are able to, do they want to knowing that the cost will jump into the millions and that Google (if they decide to) will have a fairly unlimited legal budget to attack them with? If the answer to both of these questions is not yes then there is no reason to argue this any further, you should not use a name you are questioning may violate Google's trademarks. |
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We never know, google could send a cease and desist any moment. Also, the name should be trademarked by someone, that way we will avoid the problem the jade project had. Jade was a templating library for javascript but then some company decided tu use the name jade in their products, so the project changed its name to pug. |
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@xEIkiFo legal is not black magic, it's just painful to consider what is the current state of the laws (cause there are multiple sources that could apply), what's taking precedence over what, what scope they exactly cover, what interpretation could be given to the words chosen to express it and what precedents exist. So if you don't have experience, you might be missing the point, but you also don't require a law degree to get the right answer most of the time, as long as you spend enough time researching, listen to others arguments, and think with all the data accumulated. That's why I'd say your comment would apply for both cases, unless you are a lawyer with experience and worth precising here, in intellectual property infringements:
But as I don't want to be misguiding here, I renew my recommendation to the owner. |
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- You won't be able to defend Eloston against a Google
- You won't be able to defend Eloston against trolls pushing for useless changes
And one should note the "subtle" difference between the two: the first one is legal action which may result in serious trouble and the second one is totally harmless (just like renaming the project).
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Specifically, I mean the problem of voting manipulation and unfair voting. Unfair voting is more applicable to voting for community-provided names, but voting manipulation still applies. If you could point out concrete solutions to these problems in your previous posts, that would be great. |
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@Eloston
The purpose of a democratic vote is to come to a decision which complies with the law applicable to everyone or to change the law. It does not have the purpose of confirming that one person should keep acting against the law to satisfy a minority who think "it is OK" (which really means "it's another one's problem, so no need to sacrifice everyone's comfort").
So when someone suggests voting for the sake of demonstrating that voting is something virtuous or correct but forgets the above - it has nothing to do with democracy. It is a form of manipulation aimed to make more people belie that voting can overpower sanity.
Once again, please remember: if Google decides to act against you, none of those who are against the renaming will help you. They will just forget you and move on to "defend" something else on the web.
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Eloston
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discussion
Eloston
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Yes, it is "safer"Finally we can agree on something. Sure, you could definitely say it's safer! It's safer like a driver wearing a flotation device in addition to his seatbelt is safer than a driver only wearing his seatbelt. It's safer the same way a person who knows 40 digits of Pi is "smarter" than someone who knows only 39. It's safer like Skydiving at 10,000 feet is safer than skydiving at 10,134 feet. Shifting the goalposts...But that was never the problem. No one disagreed that a name change would be "safer" - it's a matter of whether that additional "safety" is negligible. But is it worth itActually, it's simply a risk/reward analysis - even if the risk wasn't negligible, it would need to outweigh the benefits - after each were multiplied by their respective likelihoods. For instance: Relative utility of ditching the descriptive name: Bayesian Regret exampleBasic Risk Management: To calculate the total utility, you multiply how much good each case would be for the project by how likely the case is to come about. Therefore, it is objectively a hundred times better to keep the descriptive name if we used these example values. Of course we won't all agree on the values, but we don't need to! In order to change the outcome the values would have to be so different that they cause the dominant outcome to switch. Definitions don't prove things
This is not helpful. You have simply moved the disagreement to new words. We know what endorse means. Changing it to approve doesn't make it more applicable. Regardless of which dictionary you choose, Thinking disapproval is just a type of approval
...still no. Sure, it's "openly", but there's no way that's an approval.
Lol what? So can I say "I love you" where "love" is "in a negative way"?
So? It certainly doesn't prohibit all use!
Uh yes it does, you keep quoting it:
Seriously? What's the point of everything after "to" then? You wouldn't need "you can't use the name of Google to...", you'd just need "you can't use the name of Google". Nobody is interpreting that as forbidding all use.
This is pretty ridiculous. You can't approve of something "in a negative way", that's called disapproval. Anyway, if you actually believed that Google forbids "any use" of their name in a derived product, then you should have said that earlier, but you |
To be clear, there was no problem that caused this thread to happen - it only sprung up because some think that some day there could be a problem. And the fact that it didn't come up sooner is because if most people knew it wouldn't be a problem, you wouldn't hear from them, they'd simply not file a bug report about it. It's hard to measure the absence of something... Even if 1 out of 10000 equally-qualified people thought this chance was negligible, you'd still only hear from that one, and you'd have no way of knowing about the others. |
That's not really a fair characterization. Lawyers sometimes have additional insight on the quirks from experience, but trademark law is not impossible for a normal citizen to understand correctly.
That's an unnecessarily high bar - in fact, if you combine that with "knowing for sure", then even lawyers wouldn't be allowed to comment according to your rules. They're usually hard-pressed to say their interpretation is true "for sure".
Um why? That's a counterproductive demand too. If I suggest that you take immediate action and spend thousands to prepare for a giant asteroid strike that could happen tomorrow, would it be reasonable for me to say you're not allowed to object unless you're an asteroid expert?
So you gave your opinion anyway...
Only if the chance of legal trouble isn't negligible. Otherwise you do undue damage to the future discoverability of the project (which you seem to have not considered). It's not about what sounds best -- "Rockmelt" sounds pretty cool, but from the name you have no idea if it's anything like chromium (or even what it is). |
Where are you getting that from? Pug only says:
... nothing implying the product was trademarked after the JS project. Intentionally doing so would be pretty malicious. Either way, trademarked phrases are only applicable to commercial entities (you have to be selling something) and only for the specific set of products you list in the trademark. |
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@Erudition
Your attempts to deny facts through lengthy "logic" and "precise" risk "calculations" mixed with totally irrelevant "supporting references" are simply ridiculous. Of course if you like to argue for the sake of it you can "prove" anything through irrelevant "right interpretations" supporting them with the reputation of "well known references" and similar. These are well known argumentative techniques. But at the end of all that - facts are immovable, so is the license.
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So you have now just blown any argument that you may have had on it
You have just stated in writing and publicly that the entire reason for the name of the project is to benefit from the trademark of someone else that is in the exact same field (in fact the upstream for the project)... thus proving beyond all doubt that the name is used to create confusion in the namespace. |
Hmm, sounds like you need to read more of the previous messages in this thread. That's not what it means to "benefit from the trademark" (weird way to put it, but at least it's certainly more applicable than "promoting" it) and if "benefiting from the trademark" were the line-in-the-sand that makes it problematic, no one would be allow to use any trademark ever except in some useless unrelated way (and thus it would be useless to everyone). That's not where the line is, though. Check out the links I posted earlier, such as how Nominative Use works.
...well that came out of nowhere -- no one here is arguing that the project's name is actually creating "confusion in the namespace", let alone that it's proven without a doubt. We certainly all at least agree that "ungoogled-chromium" is not a "confusing" name. The argument was simply about whether worrying about legal action due to the name was prudent and practical, or just an overly enthusiastic application of the widest interpretation of the law's potential limitations. Oh, and
huh? when? And more importantly, how could I possibly know "the entire reason for the name of the project"? I didn't name it! There's no reason to believe discoverability is the only reason it's a good name. I only pointed out that the descriptiveness is one such reason why the name is a good fit - the author may very well have had plenty of other reasons. |
I find it a bit unpronounceable to be honest :) I understand it might be inspired from the "metals" theme: Feel free to pick something like that; we could even discuss about "renaming" ungoogled-chromium as Bromite, if somehow we could manage to merge the underlying projects as well (it's a separate and bigger topic to discuss). |
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what about "unevil chromium" and "unevil software"? (serious proposal) You know.... "don't do evil"? You throw their own words back at them. They don't want us to use the string "google"? Ok, the law is the law, just use the synonym "evil". ungoogle was such a great name, we are forced to change it to unevil. It's not our fault, we are innocent victims. all google references could be changed to evil. For example instead of "qjz9zk". an alternative could be "exorcised chromium".... or purified.... The description of the project could become "exorcise the ghost of so.... the future logo/mascot of the project could be an angel... and eloston is the grand priest/ exorcist / shaman or what ever.... |
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if we call google evil they would have grounds for a slander lawsuit I think. |
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You are covered from that front. It's clearly a subjective opinion and rhetorical hyperbole. not slander: Trump is evil. slander: Hillary runs a pedophile ring with coded messages from her email server. |
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beh, what about something like: "chromium privacy mod" It's crystal clear what it is. |
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How about the name "Crowbar Browser"? |
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What if you use the letter "G" in place of the brand name. "NoG" or "UnG"? That should avoid any potential legal issues, but I'm not a lawyer. |
Sure, "purified-chromium" or "pure-chromium" are still pretty descriptive, yet opinionated, as it indicates that normal copies of Chrome/Chromium are not pure (kinda like "Pure AOSP" in the Android world - just vanilla android with no manufacturer-specific bloat or customization). Still requires the prospective user to guess what the "impurities" are, though, if they don't know that Chromium is still Google-ified. But at least more descriptive than the other suggestions |
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How about calling it Purium Browser? Calling the project Ungoogled Chromium definitely would have some issues. |
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This is a follow-up for #738. Please see #759 (comment) for the latest status of this issue.
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