Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

forums.comodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 96 posts

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#41

Post by thanatropism »

hosh wrote: post #37
amluto wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Comodo invented 90 day free certificate" It's even sillier than that. Comodo has long offered a 90 day free trial cert. You have to pay to renew. Let's Encrypt gives a 90 day free cert that's freely renewable as many times as you want along with an API to renew it. These aren't the same business models at all.

As far as I can tell, Let's Encrypt isn't a business model. It's funded by ISRG who describes themselves as a public-benefit corporation and is tax-exempt by the US tax authority. I don't see any direct profit motive for the ISRG itself, though there may be indirect profit benefits to the sponsors[1]. I don't see any direct ways Let's Encrypt takes payment; more likely, their revenue comes from donations. What I don'…

"Business model", "business plan" are terms of art which are not necessarily constrained to the profit motive.

Nonprofits need business models too.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#42

Post by hosh »

ademarre wrote: post #13
kstrauser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm loathe to give him credit for publicly saying the most ridiculous things imaginable from one in his position.

Right. I'm glad he spoke publicly because it shines more light on how ridiculous his position is. He actually tries to justify (or deflect) stealing the Let's Encrypt trademark by claiming LE stole the concept of a 90-day cycle. Ridiculous.

That's not really the heart of the issue. He seems to be taking it as a point of honor, as if someone is stealing his business model ... but LE isn't a business.

Comodo might or might have innovated a 90-day free trial. But let's say for a moment that Comodo did invent the 90-day free SSL trial. The intent is for the promotional purpose of purchasing paid products. LE has no paid tiers, and the primary motivation is to help the internet get encrypted, not to sell certificates. What's ridiculous isn't the idea that a 90-day cycle got "stolen", but that the Comodo CEO persistently thought of ISRG as a business competitor when they are not even in business. (No one is fighting you, dude).

What I don't get is why so many people kept playing into that erroneous assumption of his instead of calling him on it.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#43

Post by ci5er »

fapjacks wrote: post #18
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Evidently the company realized they were fighting a losing battle, particularly after the CEO's disastrous response: https://forums.comodo.com/general-discussion-off-topic-anyth...

Tangential, but what in the hell is with the whole thing where company execs refuse to use "I" in a sentence? Read anything typed up by some founder or something, and you see sentence after sentence deliberately omitting self-reference. Here specifically: "If they have right to it then more than happy to comply"... If they have right to it then I am/we are more than happy to comply. Anytime someone posts email corres…

I know that after I'd spent several years working in Japan and then returned to the United States, both my written and spoken language (English, in this case) had a marked (and remarked upon) paucity of self-referential pronouns.

I'm guessing, in this case, that this is just an ESL thing.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#44

Post by hosh »

thanatropism wrote: post #41
hosh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Let's Encrypt isn't a business model. It's funded by ISRG who describes themselves as a public-benefit corporation and is tax-exempt by the US tax authority. I don't see any direct profit motive for the ISRG itself, though there may be indirect profit benefits to the sponsors[1]. I don't see any direct ways Let's Encrypt takes payment; more likely, their revenue comes from donations. What I don'…

"Business model", "business plan" are terms of art which are not necessarily constrained to the profit motive. Nonprofits need business models too.

I disagree. Not everything need a business model. We only think that because that is normative, not because it is necessarily true.

If by "business model" you mean, "how do we keep the lights going", that's fair. However, that's not the primary mission of Let's Encrypt.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#45

Post by hosh »

mikeash wrote: post #40
hosh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Let's Encrypt isn't a business model. It's funded by ISRG who describes themselves as a public-benefit corporation and is tax-exempt by the US tax authority. I don't see any direct profit motive for the ISRG itself, though there may be indirect profit benefits to the sponsors[1]. I don't see any direct ways Let's Encrypt takes payment; more likely, their revenue comes from donations. What I don'…

Let's Encrypt offers something for free that Comodo charges money for. They are a competitor, even if they don't make money. I think Comodo was crazy here, but I can totally understand why they see Let's Encrypt as a threat.

The Comodo CEO makes it sound as if Let's Encrypt was created to personally target him and his ideas. It's one thing to see Let's Encrypt as an existential threat, it's another to attribute malicious, personal intent on the part of Let's Encrypt. I don't think people are careful to make a distinction between impersonal competition and personal competition when speaking about this.

Also, by your argument, why would any CA allow the ISRG to use their certificates to sign free certificates? In the article I linked, there was a good argument made that creating a free SSL cert creates or enhances the market for more expensive certificates. There's a path open.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#46

Post by detaro »

hosh wrote: post #42
ademarre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm glad he spoke publicly because it shines more light on how ridiculous his position is. He actually tries to justify (or deflect) stealing the Let's Encrypt trademark by claiming LE stole the concept of a 90-day cycle. Ridiculous.

That's not really the heart of the issue. He seems to be taking it as a point of honor, as if someone is stealing his business model ... but LE isn't a business. Comodo might or might have innovated a 90-day free trial. But let's say for a moment that Comodo did invent the 90-day free SSL trial. The intent is for the promotional purpose of purchasing paid products. LE has no paid tiers, and the primary motivation is…

Just because they are not in it for profit doesn't mean they are not a competitor to his business. It actually makes it worse from a purely business perspective.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#47

Post by MaulingMonkey »

hosh wrote: post #44
thanatropism wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Business model", "business plan" are terms of art which are not necessarily constrained to the profit motive. Nonprofits need business models too.

I disagree. Not everything need a business model. We only think that because that is normative, not because it is necessarily true. If by "business model" you mean, "how do we keep the lights going", that's fair. However, that's not the primary mission of Let's Encrypt.

> If by "business model" you mean, "how do we keep the lights going", that's fair.

That was roughly my read. While "business" is frequently used as a synonym for "for profit company", that's not the only definition. Someone saying "that's none of your business" is unlikely to be talking about S corps.

> However, that's not the primary mission of Let's Encrypt.

It's the means by which they accomplish their primary mission. Can't encrypt the world if you can't keep your servers on.

Re: Comodo has filed for express abandonment of LetsEncrypt trademark applications

#50

Post by jlgaddis »

hosh wrote: post #38
nneonneo wrote: post #27

In the original Comodo forum thread about this issue (where the CEO made some claims about owning the 90-day certificate) there is this new response from a staff member ( https://forums.comodo.com/general-discussion-off-topic-anyth... ): > With LE now being an operational business, we were never going to take the these trademark applications any further. Josh posted a link to the application and as of February 8th it…

How is it that the Comodo CEO kept assuming Let's Encrypt and ISRG is a business, when it isn't? It's like he's fixated on that assumption and is dragging everyone else into it. Further, the last time I read through things about trademarks, my understanding is that they don't work the way some of the people posting say it does. Trademarks are influenced by whether it is a distinguishing mark or not. You can lose trad…

The paralegal in that forum thread is also talking about copyright -- and claims some knowledge about it. Yet this issue centers around trademarks, which are very different from copyrights.
Post reply on HN