[sf-perl] LinuxWorld Expo

[Joe Brenner]

Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Joe Brenner (doom at kzsu.stanford.edu):
>
> > I'm not sure how I feel about that trademark, but my understanding is
> > that legally we're okay: O'Reilly has an agreement with Perl Mongers,
> > you're just required to acknowledge that it's a trademark.
>
> FYI:  People are actually not legally obliged to acknowledge trademark
> ownerships.  The owners thereof _like_ you to, though.
>
> Good, short, Cory Doctorow overview on trademark:
> http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/08/14/trademarks.html

(And interestingly enough "Cory Doctorow, who works with the Electronic
Frontier Foundation" runs a website littered with amazon.com links.)

It's an interesting point that the "cease and desist" business may
just be more "legal bullying" (or as I think of it "legal
scarecrows").  Perhaps the non-profits of the world should join in a
conspiracy to start "diluting brand names"?


In any case, looking over the perlmongers faq:

  http://www.pm.org/faq/index.html

There's a "Can I make my own camel logo?" section that suggests that
O'Reilly may get upset at me for daring to invent a *new* perl camel
logo instead of using an approved "perlmongers" logo.


And looking at what the perl foundation has to say about the onion
logo, I'm afraid it strikes me as the same kind of crap from a
different source:

http://foundation.perl.org/legal/trademark.html

   This authorization to use the Perl logo is limited to uses by the
   organizations themselves, and doesn't extend to individual
   members. Representatives of the organizations should contact us at
   trademark at perlfoundation.org to obtain high-resolution versions of
   the Perl logo, and answers to any questions they have about use of
   the logo.

I'm beginning to think that perl needs a new, unencumbered logo
(ala the Debian swirl).