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Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

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Re: Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

#4
post #2

so who owns npm?

Well, before Jason Smith started to try to monetize npm, I would have said nobody. It's open source, right?

After, well, he's the first one to do it, and it's not as though anyone else was in that space. So to me he has a better claim than Nodejitsu.

It's possible that my knowledge is incomplete though so if anyone knows better please correct my misconceptions.

I can't really see Nodejitsu's claim here. Also, why didn't nodejitsu voice their reservations over his use of npm before Jason decided to monetize the project? I feel as though either we don't know the whole story or Nodejitsu is pulling a fast one on the community.

Re: Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

#5
I wonder how it relates to a few npm forks (https://github.com/rlidwka/yapm, https://github.com/visionmedia/npm) created earlier this year, especially to second one since @visionmedia didn't change its name...

And what about alternate npm-compatible registries (https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie, https://github.com/rlidwka/sinopia, https://github.com/cnpm/cnpmjs.org), not based on CouchDB?

"npm" isn't only a product name anymore since it's used extremely widely, so this doesn't seem like a good thing to do.

Re: Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

#7
post #5

I wonder how it relates to a few npm forks ( https://github.com/rlidwka/yapm , https://github.com/visionmedia/npm ) created earlier this year, especially to second one since @visionmedia didn't change its name... And what about alternate npm-compatible registries ( https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie , https://github.com/rlidwka/sinopia , https://github.com/cnpm/cnpmjs.org ), not based on CouchDB? "npm" isn't on…

In the trademark world you are arguing that "npm" has become "genericized" [1]. That certainly can happen, but that would be a very hard argument to make given npm's relative youth and the lack of true use as a generic. The people you link are either forking the actual npm client (in which case they are referring to it as a proper noun), or are building their own repo architecture, in which case they refer to it as an "npm registry" or "npm repository", not just "an npm".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Re: Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

#9
post #7
post #5

I wonder how it relates to a few npm forks ( https://github.com/rlidwka/yapm , https://github.com/visionmedia/npm ) created earlier this year, especially to second one since @visionmedia didn't change its name... And what about alternate npm-compatible registries ( https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie , https://github.com/rlidwka/sinopia , https://github.com/cnpm/cnpmjs.org ), not based on CouchDB? "npm" isn't on…

In the trademark world you are arguing that "npm" has become "genericized" [1]. That certainly can happen, but that would be a very hard argument to make given npm's relative youth and the lack of true use as a generic. The people you link are either forking the actual npm client (in which case they are referring to it as a proper noun), or are building their own repo architecture, in which case they refer to it as a…

As far as I remember, "npm registry" is a trademark as well. Isn't it? At least, that's what is written here: https://github.com/npm/npm#legal-stuff .

My point is: any single package README contains a phrase "install me using `npm install whatever`". It feels like it is generalized already...

Re: Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

#10
post #6

Issacs wrote the initial npm and was by far the largest contributor. https://github.com/npm/npm/graphs/contributors

According to Mikeal he "wrote the original version of the npm registry". More of his thoughts on the history of NPM here:

https://gist.github.com/mikeal/8947417

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