Once More Into the Breach...
So that was quite an adventure.
The whole trademark issue is very similar to patents in my mind and needs some reform. I am glad we had the opportunity to chat about trademarks and the use of them, esp in open source communities. But the initial point of the actual entry was to talk about the Genuitec people being smacked on for not making their code changes public. Gavin claims one thing while Genuitec claims another.
This goes again back to why I don't like the whole JBoss model of doing open source. What Hibernate now has is a fork of hibernate tools, one maintained by Genuitec and the 'official' one. If committers on Hibernate did not have to have a jboss.com email address but could instead have a genuitec.com email address the fixes/changes could have been discussed in an open forum, agreed on (in one form or another) and then put into the official code base. Now what we have instead is something akin to an un-useable fork. In what possible way does Genuitec posting this code help me or anyone else in the community.
This kind of behavior is what I dislike about 'commercial opensource' as defined by JBoss. I don't like that you have to have a jboss.com email address to commit to the code base. In other communities (like Eclipse or better yet Apache) you don't have to have any particular email address to become a committer, you just have to have merit. Merit gets you access, with Hibernate and JBoss merit gets you a job interview and access if you land the job. A nice big pat on the head and a 'thank you very much' if not.
I don't like that at all. I have posted about stuff I don't like about this kind of 'open', here, here, here, and here. All told I've spent a bunch of time talking about this. To reiterate I don't dislike anyone from Hibernate or JBoss, I have a couple of friends there, I've only met Gavin once in passing at a conference and he seems like a great guy. I don't have any issue with a company asserting its rights pertaining to its trademarks. But I don't like this version of open. I'm not saying its bad or evil or anything I just want people to go into the community with their eyes open. Maybe I would not even care about this issue at all if Hibernate.org was blanketed in (TM)'s everywhere so that it was more obvious. Perhaps a prominent note saying something like 'Hibernate is a trademark owned by RedHat Inc' or something similar would do the trick.
When you invest your time and energy into the Hibernate community, unless you have or get a jboss.com email address you are likely to get nasty grams from people with titles like 'Legal Specialist' if you don't watch your p's and q's. Not so in other communities, that is all I want people to get from this whole discussion. If you are an IT worker and have no aspirations of owning your own company or the like then have at Hibernate its a great tool and technology. If on the other hand you are an entrepreneur it might be good to look elsewhere.
And that is what I was trying to say yesterday, its the entrepreneur's that made Hibernate popular, it was tooling vendors like Genuitec. It was thousands of entrepreneur's telling their clients about Hibernate, it was the thousands of IT geeks reading blogs written by entrepreneur's about how cool Hibernate is that got them to try it, or fight for hibernate with their teams. The community 'made' Hibernate (I'm not referring to the code) but the community does not have the access that I think it should.
You do not have to have a JBoss email address to commit to the Hibernate codebase, and several committers on Hibernate and Seam do not. Bill, I have no idea where you got this idea - it's simply incorrect. You're continuing to try and find *something*, *anything* wrong with us, even though your original claims about us did not pan out. Please get your facts straight.
All you have to do to be a committer on JBoss or Hibernate or Seam is:
(1) have something useful to commit
(2) sign the contributor agreement:
http://labs.jboss.com/portal/con?noproject=true
Of course, just like any other opensource project, the project lead will judge whether you actually should be a committer on the project.
And again, with respect to trademarks, you're still wrong to think that this is somehow peculiar to JBoss/RedHat.
http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#Marks
Quote:
"'Apache', 'Apache Software Foundation', the multicoloured feather, and the various Apache project names and logos are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation, and are usable by others only with express permission from the ASF. References to any of them must be acknowledged with text resembling, 'Apache is a trademark of The Apache Software Foundation, and is used with permission.'"
No different to the case with our TMs, AFAICT.
Posted by Gavin King on March 22, 2007 at 07:33 AM MDT #
By the way, it's especially silly that you make this claim on the same week that Google donated a significant chunk of code to the Hibernate project.
Posted by Gavin King on March 22, 2007 at 08:18 AM MDT #
The key difference between JBoss/RedHat and Apache is that if you create a Struts course or offer Struts consulting, you don't get Apache lawyers threatening to sue you.
If you create a Hibernate course or offer consulting, it seems big bad RedHat tries to put the smack down on you.
Captain Crunch (R) sees no issue with trademarking Hibernate. Put the notice on your website and let people know so they can respond by adding the (R). Nudge people who don't to protect your (R). Take them to court if they don't respect the (R), Tis the way to do it.
Just don't send out "silly" claims to try to reduce the market when you know it is covered under fair use act. Lawyers cost a lot of money and RedHat just cost a bunch of companies thousands of dollars to talk to lawyers. Let's try to not feed the beast (lawyers).
How is Meridith doing on that retraction letter?
On a side note, Rickard, please use (R) when referring to Captain Crunch (R). In fact, please don't mention Captain Crunch (R), or Post will smite thee.
--Crunch Berries
Captain Crunch (R)
Posted by Captain Crunch (R) on March 22, 2007 at 09:24 AM MDT #
Gavin, I could not find the actual contributor agreement, the URL you posted to the agreement just allows me to search for current contributors, not see the agreement (AFAICT).
And I am not looking for ways to poke you in the eye. I actually belive this stuff or I would not write it. Apache (and Eclipse for that matter) is not a single company, its a bunch of companies and individuals and that is why I personally like the model more than the 'professional open source' model espoused by your company.
Posted by Bill Dudney on March 22, 2007 at 09:27 AM MDT #
"If you create a Hibernate course or offer consulting, it seems big bad RedHat tries to put the smack down on you."
As was acknowledged on the other thread, this should not have happened - at least not in that manner, and it happened without the knowledge of the JBoss division.
We all make mistakes from time to time. Screwing up doesn't make you evil, nor even an ass. Not fixing your errors when they are brought to your attention makes you an ass.
(Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not furious that this happened - and especially furious that it happened without my knowledge.)
"Put the notice on your website and let people know so they can respond by adding the (R)."
Agreed, Christian is already working on this.
"The key difference between JBoss/RedHat and Apache is that if you create a Struts course or offer Struts consulting, you don't get Apache lawyers threatening to sue you."
Actually Apache *do* defend their trademarks, as we well know, since they have in the past contacted us and told us what we may or may not do with respect to the Tomcat name.
Read their FAQ, and what it says about what you may do with their marks. No substantive difference, AFAICT.
Posted by Gavin King on March 22, 2007 at 09:44 AM MDT #
Consultants need more than a ® mark to avoid the wrath of RedHat's bloodsuckers. You have to phrase it the right way: Hibernate® Object–Relational Mapping Training, NOT simply Hibernate® Training. The latter is treating their trademark as an eponym for O/R mapping.
However, RedHat needs to use the same phrasing in their own use of the mark—if they want to preserve their own trademark, anyway.
Posted by Thorpe on March 22, 2007 at 11:45 AM MDT #
"We all make mistakes from time to time. Screwing up doesn't make you evil, nor even an ass. Not fixing your errors when they are brought to your attention makes you an ass."
Yes, we all make mistakes. For myself it's not even from time to time, but on a daily basis. So, that's not so strange. Screwing up is also not something that makes you evil, or even an ass, depending on what and how you do it.
The problem here, I think, is that this attitude towards using trademarks to limit competition has been shown before, the problems with this behaviour has been pointed out in quite some detail, but this was not acknowledged then by JBoss Inc. and it is now repeated again in much the same manner.
This, in my view, does indeed make you conscious of your actions and is hence not a "mistake", but rather a deliberate strategy. You have made a choice, but are somehow trying to make it look like a "mistake", which it clearly is not considering the history of it all.
Posted by Rickard Öberg on March 23, 2007 at 07:06 AM MDT #
Gavin, Lawyers do not make the kind of mistakes you are trying to hide behind. I have yet to meet a lawyer that I have the slightest inclination of calling rash, certainly not the kind of lawyers that you would find at multi-billion dollar companies. This was a premeditated campaign to make sure no one could deliver any Hibernate services or make any money without kissing the Red Hat ring. You just did not count on it backfiring this bad. Normally that is not an issue when dealing with a commercial license. We all expect it. But to bait people into investing their time and effort to help promote a technology under the pretense of transparency and openness, and then switching to a protection scheme is simply immoral. Your apology is as hollow as your defense.
Posted by Wan on March 25, 2007 at 10:31 PM MDT #
Nice Wan.
You just called me a liar, and offered zero evidence for it. (I'm not lying, nor even "spinning", of course.) Nothing you just claimed is remotely true, nor is there any evidence for it - ie. it was a disgusting smear.
Do you think this is a reasonable, or courageous, way to behave? Would you do it to my face if you met me in person? Or is it the fact that you are posting anonymously in blog comments - without fear of being held to any kind of account for your words - that makes you such a Big Man?
Well, that's one thing that *does* make you an ass.
Posted by Gavin King on March 26, 2007 at 01:45 PM MDT #
Gavin.
Struck a never I see. The *King* of smear is crying from a little heat. Last I checked this was a professional exchange of opinions. You are entitled to yours. In the spirit of openness, Iam also entitled to disagree with you and to call BS. There is no need for kindergarten profanity. I find it amazing that you are the best JBoss or Red Hat have to promote their brand.
As for courage, I will be more than glad to post to your blog once you get the nerve to allow comments.
Posted by Wan on March 26, 2007 at 06:37 PM MDT #
Gavin, I had the misfortune to attend your presentation last week at AjaxWorld. I have never seen such arrogance or total disregard for others in my 35 years of experience. At the beginning I really thought you may be suffering from tourette syndrome, screaming for no reason and shouting vulgarities. I really felt sorry for you. But as the presentation went on, it became apparent that you just enjoy cursing like a sailor regardless if it made sense or not. Everyone was stupid and f*n this or Sh*t on that. After a few minutes of this nonsense, I walked out with many more in tow. You probably didn't even notice the room emptying being so self absorbed.
Now before lobbing your trademark flame, you may want to ask yourself, why should anyone pay a lot of money to be exposed to your self indulging rants. You probably don't even like my simple message and you didn't have to pay for it.
At the end of your presentation, I walked away with two simple conclusions. I thought I would share with everyone:
1. I will resign or be fired before allowing any of the JBoss technologies into my shop. I only trust professionals into our mission critical systems. Nothing I have seen in the past two weeks would convince me that our support requests would not be rebuffed as being stupid for asking.
2. Red Hat executives must be asleep at the wheel or desperate to let someone like you speak on their behalf. How they can entrust you with the future of the company is beyond my comprehension.
I thought I would take my conclusions to my grave. But watching you present yourself in webspace much the same way as you did in person put an old man on a mission to share my experiences with a few people in the hope they would pay it forward. Lastly, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm writing this note anonymously. Not because I care what anyone has to say, but because I don't have time to deal with the usual nonsense that follows.
Posted by Bill Hughes on March 26, 2007 at 08:41 PM MDT #
Insane. People need to get over personal reactions to some presentation Gavin made, it is irrelevant to the original blog post. If anything it doesn't do anything for the argument - strikes me as ad hominem. Gavin's opinionated about software, so you don't like his opinions, move on. IMO, Hibernate works well for me.
Red Hat is a great company, I might disagree with some actions from time to time, but King, Burke, Saldhana, everyone I've come into contact with is a great technologist and is excited about the technology. The trademark issue was resolved by Webbink in the last thread, celebrate progress stop trying to tar and feather these people in the comment threads.
@Bill Dudney, I resonate with the argument, i've written about this before in long rambling posts on OnJava. JBoss always struck me as being a little less open than something like the Apache Software Foundation, but I've also come around to thinking that there is a place for communities such as JBoss. JBoss has the ability to organize open source effort in a way that other ad hoc communities do not.
Posted by Tim O'Brien on April 11, 2007 at 01:02 AM MDT #
Tim, Perhaps Bill changed the topic, but his point is equally important. It is really not that crazy for individuals and companies to vote with their pocket books when technology and company leaders prefer to act and speak as adolescents. The last couple of weeks have been sobering for many companies with the fallout from Don Imus public trial and Kathy Sierra death threats on her blog. The call for professional reforms is long over due in our industry. Many companies have already begun publishing internal standards about what their employees can say in emails or blogs regardless of professional or personal context. This fact is undoubtedly not lost on the Red Hat management team given the history of the Jboss team public persona.
Sam
Posted by SAM on April 15, 2007 at 10:08 AM MDT #