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LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

legoos.io

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#51

LEGO have a very friendly[1] explanation that they must pursue legal action to protect their trademark internationally. They have rules about using their trademark in names, logos, websites and URLs. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...

>In the LEGO Group, we believe that any original product design should be protected against copying for as long as it is produced and marketed.

I am very glad that The LEGO Group doesn't make the rules then (in so far as they don't, at least)

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#52
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't Plan9 catch on/pan out mainstream?

Plan 9 was intentionally not a product. They later tried to productize it with Inferno, but that failed primarily because it came a decade too late.

The Plan 9 source license was $1,000,000 USD (1.6M today). Not exactly pocket change. There was also the problem that Bell Labs didn't have a marketing team. Lucent tried to market Inferno and it did make it into a few Lucent products.

If anyone is interested in Plan 9 then head over to 9front.org and grab an iso. That or there is an accompanying fork of inferno named Purgatorio of which there is now a docker image.

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#53

LEGO have a very friendly[1] explanation that they must pursue legal action to protect their trademark internationally. They have rules about using their trademark in names, logos, websites and URLs. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...

"If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun."

Finally, a website I can point to people who argue about whether it's "Lego" or "Legos" and I remind them that it's technically neither since it's an adjective, not a noun.

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You broke their rules by not adding a trademark symbol after the word LEGO. You'll be receiving a C&D letter from their legal team shortly. :) Some of their rules are ridiculous, for instance I have to use all upper case and am not allowed to use the word as a noun, for instance to call them "Legos" (I must say LEGO™ bricks, even though many of the pieces are not at all brick shaped). Sorry but no. That said, I'm sur…

They don't want their trademark turning into a noun (or a verb), just like Velcro doesn't want their trademark to be used to refer to "hook and loop" [1]. It's not unreasonable for them to try to protect their trademark. 1 - https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY

Yeah and it's not unreasonable for people to push back and say "I'm going to call them Legos if I want to." Obviously they aren't going to go and sue a mommy blogger because she refers to Legos wrong (much less me saying it on Hacker News), but still.

At least Velcro has a sense of humor about it. They recognize that no one in the real world is going to follow their rules, but they still have to say that they want you to, so the word doesn't get legally genericized.

They probably actually WANT you to use it generically, it helps their brand, since they are only ones allowed to sell it by the word everyone refers to it by. But they can't say that out loud, or it has negative legal repercussions.

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#55

LEGO have a very friendly[1] explanation that they must pursue legal action to protect their trademark internationally. They have rules about using their trademark in names, logos, websites and URLs. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...

s/LegoOS/LegOS/g Edit: snark aside, another user points out that LegOS is taken by a mindstorms operating system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21285290

My vote to rename it DuplOS lol

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#59
post #42

Alternate names: BlocksOS, DistrOS, DistribOS,BuildOS I'd suggest cloning the repo locally, as when this gets TOS'd for obvious trademark issue, Github's deletion won't hit your local machine (but will also nuke forks on GH). Cool project, poor choice in name.

BrickOS At least, that's what SE calls them for their site bricks.stackexchange.com.

As others have mentioned, BrickOS already exists as alternate LEGO Mindstorms software.

Re: LegoOS: A Disseminated, Distributed Operating System

#60

LEGO have a very friendly[1] explanation that they must pursue legal action to protect their trademark internationally. They have rules about using their trademark in names, logos, websites and URLs. [1] https://www.lego.com/en-sg/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...

”In the LEGO Group, we believe that any original product design should be protected against copying for as long as it is produced and marketed”

They may believe that, but I’m not aware of any patent law that works that way. I think the design should, after x years, lose design protection (the trademark should exist for at least as long as it sees active use, so copies shouldn’t be allowed to call their product LEGO® or something similar)

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