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Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

andre.arko.net

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Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#31

Post by joshuap »

Aurornis wrote: post #27
joshuap wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding open source work doesn’t confer ownership, but also “they controlled it by funding maintainers” is not true —- many other companies and individuals from the community helped fund the work through Ruby Together and later Ruby Central.

> Funding open source work doesn’t confer ownership A true donation wouldn’t confer ownership, but in this case there are actual organizations and legal structures involved that did confer ownership.

Please explain - which organizations and legal structures, and how did they confer ownership? Be specific.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#33

Post by sc68cal »

bdcravens wrote: post #22

I realize this will come off as snide, and result in downvotes, but looking to the success of Ruby and Rails today, the "community" is as much the money that's been poured into the ecosystem as it is the warm fuzzies and volunteers. Without the millions of dollars companies like Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours, the projects we know and love wo…

> Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours

Companies are legal fictions that we allow to exist. The _people_ are the ones who did the development, management, and all the other things that had to be done.

The companies may have _paid their salaries to do so_ but there are plenty of open source communities that exist without the direct funding of work.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#34

Post by [deleted] »

bdcravens wrote: post #22

I realize this will come off as snide, and result in downvotes, but looking to the success of Ruby and Rails today, the "community" is as much the money that's been poured into the ecosystem as it is the warm fuzzies and volunteers. Without the millions of dollars companies like Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours, the projects we know and love wo…

[deleted]

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#35

Post by em-bee »

Aurornis wrote: post #28
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reasonable argument that the trademark hasn't been generalized or abandoned. There's not other project out there using the RubyGems trademark (as far as I know). As such, OP has a decent argument that there were no previous violations in need of enforcement. Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired.

> Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired. The community isn’t a legal entity. Saying that it’s owned by a public community with no boundaries or membership is equivalent to saying it’s genericized or abandoned. Even if it was, that would undermine this trademark registration which was registered by a single individual.

that wouldn't matter though, would it? a genericized trademark is not the problem. the problem is ruby central wanting to take control of the name/trademark. if they want the trademark now, they now have to fight, and if in that fight, it is established that nobody gets to own the trademark, then the current trademark registration would have achieved its goal.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#36

Post by petercooper »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #11
mijoharas wrote: post #2

Interesting. > I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project. As all of this was happening I had wondered if there was going to be some kind of copyright dispute, but I guess it's gonna be trademark based. Does anyone have any insights into how this might play out? How do trademark disputes tend to happen? (I assume this is in the US?)

After fifteen years of not enforcing the trademark, a common legal interpretation in case of a conflict would be to consider the trademark genericized or abandoned. Which means any trademark owners apparently were not interested in enforcing their trademarks and effectively abandoned their rights. Of course this is not guaranteed and just a common interpretation of trademark law by judges in trademark related cases.…

Oracle is in the same boat with Javascript. Technically they own the trademark. But world+dog has been using that trademark freely without them doing anything about it. So, their claims to the trademark are weak at this point.

And, yet, it seems to still be difficult to do anything about it, with Deno now raising $200k to fight it. Ultimately, someone still needs deep enough pockets to push the point even if the legal point seems straightforward.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#37

Post by dvcoolarun »

RC's funding ( partially from sponsors like Shopify, not just conferences ) was allegedly conditional on this takeover.

Arko registered the Bundler trademark to prevent this corporate capture and plans to give it to a new, truly community-governed organization.

The biggest risk is the loss of long-time maintainers and a resulting community split/forking of key infra. Total mess.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#38

Post by em-bee »

bdcravens wrote: post #22

I realize this will come off as snide, and result in downvotes, but looking to the success of Ruby and Rails today, the "community" is as much the money that's been poured into the ecosystem as it is the warm fuzzies and volunteers. Without the millions of dollars companies like Heroku, Shopify, Basecamp, Github, 37 Signals, and others have spent in terms of money and developer-hours, the projects we know and love wo…

those entities are as much the "community"

sure, but the issue is that one of these entities now demands exclusive use of something that should be shared between them and others.

saying that "this belongs to the community" doesn't mean that this entity is not part of the community, but that they don't get to exclusively own something that should be owned by everyone.

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#39

Post by type0 »

Aurornis wrote: post #28
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reasonable argument that the trademark hasn't been generalized or abandoned. There's not other project out there using the RubyGems trademark (as far as I know). As such, OP has a decent argument that there were no previous violations in need of enforcement. Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired.

> Until a week ago, the trademark was (arguably) being used by a community owned project as desired. The community isn’t a legal entity. Saying that it’s owned by a public community with no boundaries or membership is equivalent to saying it’s genericized or abandoned. Even if it was, that would undermine this trademark registration which was registered by a single individual.

> owned by a public community with no boundaries or membership is

membership in github org is still a membership

Re: Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

#40

Post by type0 »

eowyn wrote: post #9
colinbartlett wrote: post #5

Has there been any attempt from Ruby Central to undo the damage they caused? Can anyone comment on the current state of affairs?

I think this was the last statement from Ruby Central: https://youtu.be/VyCiE3GjQps?si=QgY1sa_w-59jJjQ3 This topic seems to be in a holding pattern now. People are waiting to see how Ruby Central responds. Some are hoping for the Q&A to be rescheduled or at least another statement

same as previous written statements

blah, blah, strengthening governance, blah, blah

again, conflating code and rubygems.org service

anyway it's about "protecting the Ruby community"

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