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Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

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Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#61

Post by ahachete »

petergeoghegan wrote: post #56
ahachete wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution. Its governing board cannot have more than 40% members of the same company. Please go to https://postgresql.fund/ and read the Statutes. Actually, a "Fundación" in Spain is an entity specially scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice, and could never to anything like this. It is meant to be for the public…

> Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution. What about private individuals? Specifically, you? Quoting the charter here: https://postgresql.fund/documents/Fundacion_PostgreSQL-Statu... : """ Article 13. Honorary Members. ... 2. The Founder, Mr. Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa, is Honorary Life Member as the Honorary President of the Foundation…

In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice. This means, among other things, that:

* Every action of its board is supervised by the Ministry of Justice. * No action or change to the status can go against the initial will (which is part of the Estatutes, in particular Articles 3 and 4). Even if anyone would try to change them, they could only be done in a way that respects them. This is what is called "the founder's will".

So it's a very protective non-profit, which always needs to serve the public good and the founder's wills, which are Articles 3 and 4. And there's even public supervision for this.

We believed this form of a non-profit is much stronger and better to protect a Community like Postgres from potential rogue actors.

As an aside, we contemplate honorary (non-voting) members. We believe is a good thing. I'd also propose the same for Core --I believe at least Bruce Momjian should be named as such.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#62

Post by remram »

jpalomaki wrote: post #53
remram wrote: post #26

Why does this happen? What's the point of trademarks existing at all, if you have to fight for it every time someone makes a claim to it? What's the point of registration if the same trademark will be awarded again without regard to existing trademarks in the same region?

In general you are responsible for defending your trademarks and taking action if they are violated. In non-obvious cases this makes perfect sense. There’s plenty of abandoned trademarks. This system means that you can’t just take old and forgotten trademark and start suddenly demanding money from companies that (unknowingly) infringe it. I believe this is also the reason why big name brands sometimes go after indivi…

It looks like a trademark has already registered in Spain to that different organization, even though there were existing trademark registrations and an organization (PGCAC) actively looking to defend it.

Unless the PGCAC majorly messed up some process or didn't respond in time to inquiries from Spain officials, it looks to me like the system (at least in Spain?) does not work.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#63

Post by ahachete »

vickychijwani wrote: post #54
mjw1007 wrote: post #51

Are OnGres or Álvaro Hernández active in PostgreSQL development, or otherwise active in the community? Or have they appeared out of nowhere?

I believe this is their HN profile, see for yourself (as indicated by comments from them in this thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ahachete Personally I'm interested in hearing more from them, as they don't fit the "trademark troll" description that commenters seem to be taking for granted here. Seeing some interesting discussion dynamics at play.

I hope this clarifies our point: https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post...

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#64

Post by petergeoghegan »

ahachete wrote: post #61
petergeoghegan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution. What about private individuals? Specifically, you? Quoting the charter here: https://postgresql.fund/documents/Fundacion_PostgreSQL-Statu... : """ Article 13. Honorary Members. ... 2. The Founder, Mr. Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa, is Honorary Life Member as the Honorary President of the Foundation…

In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice. This means, among other things, that: * Every action of its board is supervised by the Ministry of Justice. * No action or change to the status can go against the initial will (which is part of the Estatutes, in particular Articles 3 and 4). Even if anyone would try to change them, they could only be done in a way that respec…

> This is what is called "the founder's will".

Just to be clear: you're saying that "the founder's will" should not be interpreted as meaning "what Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa [the founder for life] decides"?

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#65

Post by ahachete »

vickychijwani wrote: post #60
mbreese wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time though, they aren't playing the role of good community citizen either. It's really confusing to see what the motivations are here. Why openly antagonize a community that you claim to be a part of and represent? I hope there is more to it, but otherwise, this just seems like a stunt. Surely @ahachete must realize that the Postgres Core team must defend their trademarks (otherwise they can be lost or l…

Yes I'm a bit confused about their motivations too. Sharing what I've pieced together so far (and trying to approach this from a good-faith perspective): My understanding so far is that they run a Postgres consulting firm [1], and it appears they took the liberty of registering a Postgres trademark for the class of "professional services" in order to (I presume) protect fair use by their firm and (they claim in their…

Actually, IMHO, it's the Core team + PAC + PEU who have acted in bad faith.

As the post states, with dates, there has never been any communication from them to discuss this matter. Only through laywers, since day 0. Even some of them, long-time personal friends of mine, where shut of and were banned to communicate even at a personal level. Not even with laywers present.

There was no need to make all this public. This clearly hurts the Community.

As the post says, there's no explanation to why PEU, who is as legit as any other non-profit Postgres association, including Fundación PostgreSQL, can hold trademarks and not being sued and publicly bashed.

If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación? Conversely: if there should be one trademark holder (and we agree, read the proposal we submitted to them which got no reply!) then it should be a legal entity with more solid grounds than current Core's Group (which has no legal entity behind) or PAC, which is a quite opaque association too.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#66

Post by robocat »

Here is the full response from Álvaro Hernández at Fundación PostgreSQL:

https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post...

as referred to by Álvaro’s (hn user ahachete’s) comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514523

I am repeating the link because ahachete was getting downvoted here and he also started a new thread instead of continuing this one.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#67

Post by lol768 »

ahachete wrote: post #43
throwthere wrote: post #9

Álvaro Hernández here apparently runs a PostgreSQL consulting firm [1] and controls "Fundación PostgreSQL." Would Fundación PostgreSQL have the power to grant exclusive use of the trademark to the consulting firm? [1] https://ongres.com/about-us/#team

Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution. Its governing board cannot have more than 40% members of the same company. Please go to https://postgresql.fund/ and read the Statutes. Actually, a "Fundación" in Spain is an entity specially scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice, and could never to anything like this. It is meant to be for the public…

Can you please make your affiliation with Fundación PostgreSQL clear in both your bio and a disclaimer in the comments you write here? Thanks.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#68

Post by ahachete »

petergeoghegan wrote: post #64
ahachete wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice. This means, among other things, that: * Every action of its board is supervised by the Ministry of Justice. * No action or change to the status can go against the initial will (which is part of the Estatutes, in particular Articles 3 and 4). Even if anyone would try to change them, they could only be done in a way that respec…

> This is what is called "the founder's will". Just to be clear: you're saying that "the founder's will" should not be interpreted as meaning "what Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa [the founder for life] decides"?

No, the Founder's are the Founding members (5).

In any case, read the will: Article's 3 and 4. Do you disagree with them? Do you think they are bad for Postgres, or good?

Do you support that will?

Because if so, this will is a powerful asset of this NPO, as it cannot be (significantly) changed. However, Core's will, as well as PEU and PAC's will, could be changed in a way that would go against Postgres.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#69

Post by rhaas »

ahachete wrote: post #59
Jare wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just post the list here to get the ball rolling?

Rubén J. Bravo, Manuel Argiz, César Calvo Pinilla, Alberto Picón and myself.

I have been a PostgreSQL hacker since 2008 and a PostgreSQL user for many years before that. The first mention of my name in the PostgreSQL commit log is in 2003, and the first version of PostgreSQL that I used was 7.something; it couldn't drop columns yet.

Now that doesn't mean that I know every person who does good work on behalf of PostgreSQL, but it does mean that I expect to recognize the names of most people who have been involved in the project to a significant degree. And the only one of those names I recognize is yours.

I tried a quick Google search of each name with "site:postgresql.org" and the only one of those names that gets any hits is, again, yours. That means that, as far as Google knows, not a single one of those people has posted even a single message to any PostgreSQL mailing list ever. Needless to say, that's not close to true for any current member of the PostgreSQL core team, or a vast number of people who are not on the core team but who are involved in the project to greater or lesser extents.

It is true that the PostgreSQL community is distributed, and not everything happens or is required to happen on postgresql.org. But I think it is nevertheless extremely difficult to argue that a group of people who have never posted there even once are a more legitimate group to be in charge of PostgreSQL's trademarks than the PostgreSQL core team.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#70

Post by ahachete »

robocat wrote: post #66

Here is the full response from Álvaro Hernández at Fundación PostgreSQL: https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post... as referred to by Álvaro’s (hn user ahachete’s) comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514523 I am repeating the link because ahachete was getting downvoted here and he also started a new thread instead of continuing this one.

My bad. Thanks.
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