On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 6:26 PM, Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > As many of you already know, the Git project (as a member of Software > Freedom Conservancy) holds a trademark on "Git". This email will try to > lay out a bit of the history and procedure around the enforcement of > that trademark, along with some open questions about policy. > > I'll use "we" in the text below, which will generally mean the Git > Project Leadership Committee (PLC). I.e., the people who represent the > Git project as part of Conservancy -- me, Junio Hamano, and Shawn > Pearce. > > We approached Conservancy in Feb 2013 about getting a trademark on Git > to ensure that anything calling itself "Git" remained interoperable with > Git. Conservancy's lawyer drafted the USPTO application and submitted it > that summer. The trademark was granted in late 2014 (more on that delay > in a moment). > > Concurrently, we developed a written trademark policy, which you can > find here: > > https://git-scm.com/trademark > > This was started from a template that Conservancy uses and customized by > Conservancy and the Git PLC. > > While the original idea was to prevent people from forking the > software, breaking compatibility, and still calling it Git, the policy > covers several other cases. > > One is that you can't imply successorship. So you also can't fork the > software, call it "Git++", and then tell everybody your implementation > is the next big thing. > > Another is that you can't use the mark in a way that implies association > with or endorsement by the Git project. To some degree this is necessary > to prevent dilution of the mark for other uses, but there are also cases > we directly want to prevent. > > For example, imagine a software project which is only tangentially > related to Git. It might use Git as a side effect, or might just be > "Git-like" in the sense of being a distributed system with chained > hashes. Let's say as an example that it does backups. We'd prefer it > not call itself GitBackups. We don't endorse it, and it's just using the > name to imply association that isn't there. You can come up with similar > hypotheticals: GitMail that stores mailing list archives in Git, or > GitWiki that uses Git as a backing store. > > Those are all fictitious examples (actually, there _are_ real projects > that do each of those things, but they gave themselves much more unique > names). But they're indicative of some of the cases we've seen. I'm > intentionally not giving the real names here, because my point isn't to > shame any particular projects, but to discuss general policy. > > Careful readers among you may now be wondering about GitHub, GitLab, > Gitolite, etc. And now we get back to why it took over a year to get the > trademark granted. > > The USPTO initially rejected our application as confusingly similar to > the existing trademark on GitHub, which was filed in 2008. While one > might imagine where the "Git" in GitHub comes from, by the time we > applied to the USPTO, both marks had been widely used in parallel for > years. So we worked out an agreement with GitHub which basically says > "we are mutually OK with the other trademark existing". > > (There was another delay caused by a competing application from a > proprietary version control company that wanted to re-brand portions of > their system as "GitFocused" (not the real name, but similar in spirit). > We argued our right to the name and refused to settle; they eventually > withdrew their application). > > So GitHub is essentially outside the scope of the trademark policy, due > to the history. We also decided to explicitly grandfather some major > projects that were using similar portmanteaus, but which had generally > been good citizens of the Git ecosystem (building on Git in a useful > way, not breaking compatibility). Those include GitLab, JGit, libgit2, > and some others. The reasoning was generally that it would be a big pain > for those projects, which have established their own brands, to have to > switch names. It's hard to hold them responsible for picking a name that > violated a policy that didn't yet exist. > > If the "libgit2" project were starting from scratch today, we'd probably > ask it to use a different name (because the name may imply that it's an > official successor). However, we effectively granted permission for this > use and it would be unfair to disrupt that. > > There's one other policy point that has come up: the written policy > disallows the use of "Git" or the logo on merchandise. This is something > people have asked about it (e.g., somebody made some Git stress balls, > and another person was printing keycaps with a Git logo). We have always > granted it, but wanted to reserve the right in case there was some use > that we hadn't anticipated that would be confusing or unsavory. > > Enforcement of the policy is done as cases are brought to the attention > of Conservancy and the Git PLC. Sometimes people mail Conservancy > directly, and sometimes a use is noticed by the Git PLC, which mails > Conservancy. In either case, Conservancy's lawyer pings the Git PLC, > and we decide what to do about it, with advice from the lawyer. The end > result is usually a letter from the lawyer politely asking them to stop > using the trademark. > > So how does the Git PLC make decisions? We generally try to follow the > policy in an equitable way, but there are a lot of corner cases. Here > are some rules of thumb we've worked out: > > - Things that are only tangentially related to Git are out of policy > (e.g., if you had a service which rewards bitcoin for people's > commits, we'd prefer it not be branded GitRewards). > > - Anything that claims to be Git but does not interoperate is out. > We haven't had to use that one yet. > > - Portmanteaus ("GitFoo" or "FooGit") are out. Most of the cases run > into this rule. For instance, we asked GitHub to not to use "DGit" > to refer to their replicated Git solution, and they[1] rebranded. > We also asked "GitTorrent" not to use that name based on this rule. > > - Commands like "git-foo" (so you run "git foo") are generally OK. > This is Git's well-known extension mechanism, so it doesn't really > imply endorsement (on the other hand, you do not get to complain if > you choose too generic a name and conflict with somebody else's use > of the same git-foo name). > > - When "git-foo" exists, we've approved "Git Foo" as a matching > project name, but we haven't decided on a general rule to cover this > case. The only example here is "Git LFS". > > So that's more or less where we're at now. In my opinion, a few open > questions are: > > 1. Is the portmanteau clause a good idea? GitTorrent is a possibly > interesting case there. It's an open source project trying to > make a torrent-like protocol for Git. That's something we'd like to > have happen. But does the name imply more endorsement than we're > willing to give (especially at an early stage)? > > 2. Is it a problem that the grandfathering of some names may create a > branding advantage? Under the policy today, we wouldn't grant > "GitHub" or "GitLab". Does that give an unfair advantage to the > incumbents? > > I think the answer is "yes", but the Git PLC is also not sure that > there is a good solution. If we'd thought about trademark issues > much earlier, we would have been in different circumstances and > probably would have made different decisions. But we didn't, so we > have to live with how things developed in the meantime. > > Loosening now would be a mistake as it would cause a lot of > confusion around the trademark and make it harder for us to stop > the uses that we really care about stopping now. > > 3. Was granting "Git LFS" the right call? I think the project is a good > one and has worked well with the greater Git community. But I think > the name has implied some level of "officialness". We obviously > need to allow "git-lfs" as a name. But should the policy have said > "you can call this LFS, and the command is git-lfs, but don't say > 'Git LFS'". I'm not sure. > > One option would have been to ask "git-foo" to prefer "Foo for Git" > instead of "Git Foo" in their branding (it's too late now for "Git > LFS", so this is a hypothetical question for future requests now). > > 4. I think the merchandise clause has worked fine, and in general the > plan is to grant it in most cases. I have trouble thinking of an > item I _wouldn't_ want the Git logo on, and I'd rather err on the > side of permissiveness than be the arbiter of taste. And having the > Git logo on merchandise generally raises awareness of Git. > > But perhaps people have stronger opinions (either about the type of > item, or perhaps the practices of the manufacturer producing it). > It's hard to predict how a particular item would impact how people > see the Git brand. > > -Peff > > [1] I used "they" to refer to GitHub, but as many of you know, I am also > employed by GitHub. If you are wondering how that works, I generally > abstain from any decisions regarding GitHub (and that includes the > "Git LFS" decision, which was a project started by GitHub). That > leaves two voting PLC members for those decisions; Conservancy gets > a tie-breaking vote, but it has never come up. Is "Gitter" allowed? (https://gitter.im/). More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitter Also, their twitter handle is @gitchat. Not sure I'd even classify "gitter" as a portmanteau. - Sylvie