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Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

postgresql.org

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Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#71

Post by ahachete »

lol768 wrote: post #67
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…

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

Sure. Fundación PostgreSQL co-founder and current President.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#72

Post by anonymousisme »

Supermancho wrote: post #46
anonymousisme wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux has had the LKML for almost three decades. It still works well for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list

I don't participate in any mailing lists since at least 2008 and I'm pretty sophisticated. What constitutes "works" is that they (Linux Kernel working group) have a very primitive forum (mailing list) wherein there is no recognized pressure to change. People still use HAM radio because they "work" but that's not the optimal way to collaborate. Give it a few more decades.

I've used the LKML to contribute changes, and I'm also an amateur radio operator. I guess that makes me a fossil.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#73

Post by ahachete »

rhaas wrote: post #69
ahachete wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Postgres is not only about code. It's a Community. Contributions are more than code.

We value team membership by their abilities, and values. Those may prove better at building Community that C programming ability.

Yet you are wrong when you state that Core Team holds trademarks. Core is not even a legal entity (the main mistake that I've been voicing for years; it should).

Instead, there's a "loosely associated" association in Canada (PAC), with a governing board as opaque as Core, that holds the trademarks. Let's even assume this is OK.

But then, PEU (https://www.postgresql.eu/) also holds trademarks! Why? Is PEU an "official" association in any way? (if so, there should be a process and rules to become official, but there aren't).

So if Core (read: PAC) is the only one who should hold the trademarks, why is not Core/PAC also suing and publicly bashing against PEU? What makes PEU special? What makes legally PEU different from other Postgres NPOs?

I've been asking this question for years, including many times during this "debate" with Core/PEU/PAC about the trademarks. No answer.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#74

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…

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

The document says:

"The Founder [singular], Mr. Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa, is Honorary Life Member..."

It goes on to say:

"...the willingness of the Founder [singular] expressed in this Statutes"

See why I'm connecting the two sentences?

Don't you think that this choice of words is, at the very least, confusing? Maybe you should issue a clarification on your blog. Perhaps it's all just a misunderstanding.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#75

Post by kbenson »

ahachete wrote: post #65
vickychijwani wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

That's sort of a nonsensical take. Of course people with any sort of connection to the other side would be advised not to speak to you without a lawyer, and not to speak with a lawyer if they had nothing legally relevant to add. Your actions with regard to copyright were legal in nature, you should expect a legal response.

I think the very valid question in this is were you contacted in 2020 and told to cease and desist using a legal trademark by the current owners, and did you fail to do so? If that's true, I'm not sure what defense you have. As I see it, the only responsible action at that time if you really care about the issues you raise would be to cease and desist and open an dialogue that is not subject to legal proceedings and their need to defend their copyright lest they lose it.

> 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.

That's not for you to decide. The correct way to go about that is not to make the holding entity and then try to surreptitiously acquire the trademark, but to have approached the community first. Did you approach the community prior to attempting to take over an aspect of their management and holdings, or not? If you did, what was the response?

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#76

Post by jarcane »

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…

> In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice.

And US corporations are also "legal entities scrutinized by" the DOJ and the SEC.

Look how well that works. The fact that people can sue you if they have enough money does not really make this any more trustworthy than anything else.

It feels an awful lot like you are throwing around terms like a smokescreen and hoping people don't understand Spanish law well enough to confront you about it.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#77

Post by marcosdumay »

tempest_ wrote: post #27
oarsinsync wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the downvotes on your perfectly legitimate comment are absurd, but here we are. To get technical, the problem that you're having isn't that interacting with mailing lists is cumbersome, but rather, interacting with mailing list archives is cumbersome. You're not wrong. Web interfaces for mailing list archives haven't really changed in yonks, and there's little incentive to do so. The only people who use the archiv…

That feels like a totally fair assessment. I guess I would say that mailing lists favor producers over consumers. Often when I am looking at a mailing list it is for the same reason I am poking through a GitHub issue. I am looking for someone who had a similar problem and maybe someone else had a solution. Thus I think I am largely a consumer. As a consumer I dont often think, let me go to my email client. My email c…

> I guess I would say that mailing lists favor producers over consumers.

It favors insiders and temporal information, but there's no bias on the producers vs. consumers dimension. Unfortunately, you are an outsider trying to access old information, so you are severely disfavored here. A subredit is slightly less biased against outsiders but is much more heavily biased against old information.

If you can structure your information it is almost always better in another format, but there is always something that can't.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#78

Post by mbreese »

ahachete wrote: post #65
vickychijwani wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Only through laywers

Of course they will only talk via lawyers! That's what they have to do to make sure that all communication is clear, documented, and not misinterpreted (by either party). Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

And as soon as this escalates to a lawsuit, the existence of the dispute will be public.

>If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación?

No one is saying that they/you can't hold trademarks. You just can't register ones that would be confusing to the public (which is the purpose of trademarks -- to avoid public confusion). And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing.

From the PostgreSQL EU website (as linked by you), these are their specific trademarks:

PGConf, PGDay, Postgres Conference, PostgreSQL Conference

These don't seem to be confusing about what the database itself is called, or how the project is managed. Trying to trademark "PostgreSQL" and "PostgreSQL Community" is way too confusing with respect to the primary project. You're basically trying to take over the global naming rights for the entire project. Whatever the relationship is between Postgres Core and PostgreSQL EU (and it is a bit opaque), that's not for you to judge and it has no bearing on what rights you feel Fundación has to the trademark "Postgres" or "PostgreSQL".

One reason why you're getting slammed so hard on this is that these have been hard learned lessons in the FOSS community over the past few decades. Trademarks are one of the few FOSS-compatible ways to protect projects, names, and publicity -- especially against commercial entities that may not have the best intentions. They must be defended in order to protect these projects.

And I'm sorry, but the global stability of the Postgres project is far more important than whatever good intentions you had.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#79

Post by kgwxd »

mbreese wrote: post #58
vickychijwani wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Feels a lot like the Freenode story. Still not sure what the endgame is/was there either, but the outcome certainly wasn't great for the community.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#80

Post by FractalHQ »

tempest_ wrote: post #18
gaudat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse UX to this generation of developers than say Discord or other IMs I guess.

I don't think discord or slack is a great alternative as it is very ephemeral (and not really open source / decentralized) but I do think interacting with a mailing list is worse than a threaded forum type layout.

Discord is amazing, especially with the advanced search features, and now threads. An open source alternative to discord like the one featured on ShowHN recently would be ideal.
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