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Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

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Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#91

Post by petergeoghegan »

ahachete wrote: post #83
mbreese wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 F…

> Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen. But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers. So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied. > And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing. That doma…

> The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer...

The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.

I have been working on Postgres (primarily as a Postgres backend hacker) for over a decade now. The people from the first two groups are friends and colleagues. There are problems, but on the whole these people have a significant amount of moral authority for good reasons. They have at least gotten us this far.

The idea that one of the first two organizations from your list are at risk of going rogue is beyond ludicrous. There are certainly legitimate criticisms that one could make about the project's governance, but this isn't one of them.

> It's just that we disagree what the governing bodies of that community should be, believing that the current ones are a great liability and need urgent reform.

This is not reform. This is a clumsily executed power grab.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#92

Post by ahachete »

mattashii wrote: post #90
ahachete wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" ass…

> (if so, there should be a process and rules to become official, but there aren't) I'm not 100% sure, but you seem to be looking for https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/npos/ ? Those organizations are then in turn listed at https://www.postgresql.org/about/donate/

No, I mean the "rules" that would enable a NPO to be able to hold IP for the project. There are no rules for that, yet PostgreSQL Europe holds trademarks and domain names for the PostgreSQL project.

And nobody has asked them, neither sued them, for this. Indeed, PostgreSQL Europe joined together with Canada to sue Fundación.

But PostgreSQL Europe is no different from Fundación: just a Postgres NPO.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#93

Post by ahachete »

petergeoghegan wrote: post #91
ahachete wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen. But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers. So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied. > And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing. That doma…

> The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer... The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.…

> The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.

You acknowledge, yet fail to see the problem. That these two entities overlap so much is a very bad thing, and definitely a liability if things turn bad from a legal perspective.

This is one of the issues I have been calling for reform for many years. I understand how things evolve; but when problems are recognized, then it's time to fix them.

If we all agree (we do!) that a single entity should have all the IP for the project, that's what needs to be. "cosy" is not a valid reason for keeping the current status quo.

Actually, if you read the terms how our proposal to Core, we're ready to hand the trademarks if a not "cosy", but a solid, legal structure is established. Which doesn't exist today. And we consider this puts the project at risk.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#94

Post by geofft »

ahachete wrote: post #68
petergeoghegan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In your longer response https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post... you say that the advantage of the Fundación over the core team is that it is protects against PostgreSQL being acquired:

> In other words: a PostgreSQL association may be turned into a cooking, or into an Oracle association; whereas Fundación PostgreSQL will always remain a PostgreSQL nonprofit, for the sole benefit of the PostgreSQL Community.

and

> If one of the main resilience strategies of the PostgreSQL Community is to have a distributed IP strategy, which protects it from being bought, why is one part of the Community legally threatening another part?

But I do not see anything in Articles 3 and 4 that addresses this. Suppose a majority of PostgreSQL developers were to accept job offers from Oracle and the Core Team decided to rebrand it as "Oracle PostgreSQL". I don't see anything in Articles 3 and 4 that would prevent the Fundación from recognizing Oracle PostgreSQL as the legitimate / real PostgreSQL. It simply talks about "the Open Source software known as PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org)", and as you know, Oracle's MySQL is still known as "MySQL" and still is at www.mysql.org.

In fact, Articles 3 and 4 would obligate the Fundación to support Oracle, to contribute to Oracle, to assign copyright to Oracle if they added that requirement (the Fundación is required to contribute to PostgreSQL, and there is no clause saying "unless it requires assigning copyright"), to promote Oracle PostgreSQL, and so forth. Right?

That is to say, it seems to me that it is an advantage that PEU and PAC do not have any such commitment to stick with whoever happens to call themselves "PostgreSQL" today, and a disadvantage that the Fundación must convince the Ministry of Justice that Oracle's leadership of MySQL (which has been fine, not great but certainly MySQL is a usable product) has actually been so bad that the founding documents need to be changed.

(I am not much of a Postgres user, and I know basically nothing of how it runs, and I also know nothing of Spanish law, so I'm definitely not trying to say that you're wrong and they're right. I'm just trying to understand what your claim is and how it works.)

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#95

Post by petergeoghegan »

ahachete wrote: post #93
petergeoghegan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer... The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.…

> The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot. You acknowledge, yet fail to see the problem. That these two entities overlap so much is a very…

> That these two entities overlap so much is a very bad thing, and definitely a liability if things turn bad from a legal perspective.

You are the one that is filing confusing, duplicative trademark and servicemark claims that waste the community's time. You seem to be asking me to put that aside for a moment. But I'm not willing to do that for reasons that will be obvious to most people.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#96

Post by kbenson »

ahachete wrote: post #86
kbenson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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? Yes, this is the case. Indeed, many times. I have personally voiced many concerns about different asp…

> we declined used of the domain name following Core's request, but raised --again-- concerns over the governance of Postgres.

So does the community agree with your stance? A majority of them? Or are you forcing your opinion on the majority by taking action in their name without knowing their stance on the subject?

I have to be honest, it's hard to understand what makes you think you've the right to make these demands of the the community and the leadership. Perhaps it's all much more obvious to someone with more knowledge of the situation, or if you put forth more info that you assume people know, but from the outside nothing you've stated really makes your actions sound justified to my eyes.

> And as stated publicly, we're ready to transfer them to a single entity. It just can't be the current ones.

Honestly, this just sounds like you're holding something hostage and arguing in bad faith. "Sure we'll give back what we took, just not to you because we don't like you, which is why we took it, so designate someone else and we promise we'll give your stuff to them."

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#97

Post by mattashii »

ahachete wrote: post #92
mattashii wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (if so, there should be a process and rules to become official, but there aren't) I'm not 100% sure, but you seem to be looking for https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/npos/ ? Those organizations are then in turn listed at https://www.postgresql.org/about/donate/

No, I mean the "rules" that would enable a NPO to be able to hold IP for the project. There are no rules for that, yet PostgreSQL Europe holds trademarks and domain names for the PostgreSQL project. And nobody has asked them, neither sued them, for this. Indeed, PostgreSQL Europe joined together with Canada to sue Fundación. But PostgreSQL Europe is no different from Fundación: just a Postgres NPO.

But they are different:

PGEU is directly affiliated and acknowledged by the PostgreSQL community, whereas Fundación is not. This can be seen by the absence of Fundación on the donations page (where PGEU is listed), the lack of mailing list for Fundación (general-eu is maintained by or allocated for PGEU), and it is missing from IRC/external webpages/Local User Groups pages (#postgresql-eu is under management of PGEU). As such, you should not call Fundación a "Postgres NPO", as it is unaffiliated with the main PostgreSQL project.

Furthermore, Fundación does not seem to have a fair and transparent method for the community to get involved; instead of association members voting for the board (Patronage) the board seemingly appoints their own members (Art. 10(2) of Statutes). Lastly, Fundación has no well-defined trademark policy (only fair use, so I would be unable to start my local PostgreSQL Community (Netherlands) without infringing on the trademark).

PGEU however is transparent in who can become a member (~anyone in Europe), how the board is elected (popular vote by all members of proposed member candidates) and clearly describes in what conditions these brands may be used other than the normal fair use policy.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#98

Post by exikyut »

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…

Thanks for this info.

The way I read/understand this comment is that

1) you took the cue of PEU registering trademarks in Europe to take the initiative and set up shop in Spain with the visibility of a locally-held trademark by a carefully-chosen representational entity (foundation)

and then

2) there has never been an opportunity to have an open-ended conversation about the events in (1).

Without further context (which may completely derail my theory and leave me very disoriented :) ), I get the impression that the other organization(s) were not expecting any of this to take place, and have subsequently reacted to it as though it were a threat.

If there *was* prior communication/discussion/negotiation, then I have no idea why they're responding like this.

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#99

Post by exikyut »

FractalHQ wrote: post #80
tempest_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access.

So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©.

Do I use Discord? No.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes.

Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out

Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options:

1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless

2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware

Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...

Re: Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

#100

Post by howaboutnope »

gaudat wrote: post #11
jimhefferon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cumbersone in what way?

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

With the amount of people who don't care about the difference between 10ns and 10ms calling themselves developers, I'm sure even Clippy would be the perfect IDE for some of them, so that's not saying much. Apart from the lack of nesting, Discord and other instant messengers are way worse at creating a searchable archive, the best option AFAIK is to export the chat with third-party tools that break the TOS.. an option so bad, it's not even an option.
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