Gnome Foundation and Groupon product names – Updated

Hmmm.... This doesn't seem to line up with what Gnome said [0]:

> It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here [1], here [2] and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous.

Yet Groupon says:

> We’ve been communicating with the Gnome Foundation for months to try to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, including alternative branding options, and we’re happy to continue those conversations. And if we can’t come up with a resolution, we’ll be glad to look for another name.

If we take the Gnome post as fact it appears Groupon thought they could get away with this then when they saw the (potential) backlash they backed away from their position. This may not be the case but I'm much more inclined to believe Gnome over Groupon

[0] https://www.gnome.org/groupon/

[1] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86200190%0A86200193%0A8620...

[2] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287930%0A86287935%0A8628...

[3] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86441913%0A86441922%0A8644...

Either way Groupon made the right decision here imo

It's not always about simple existence. I suspect they thought they could get away with doing something that's totally different -- but the reaction they saw way that their users wouldn't see it that way.

They knew it existed, but they didn't know how much of a backlash they would be. Hindsight is 20/20.

In the words of Winston Churchill, more or less:

Groupon will always do the right thing... but only after everything else fails.

Groupon lies. However the end result is good either way for GNOME and open source. Now the only question is why was the fastest up voted post in HN history which was Gnome vs Groupon in favor of Gnome moderated to the second page while this Groupon post is at the top of the front page with almost no votes!

Does someone at HN have stock in groupon or something? Either way it's time for a transparent Blockchain based HN/reddit. This moderator bias crap is bs.