Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 20:28:34 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mv /usr/src/games /dev/null - any objections? Message-ID: <199711042028.NAA25735@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <3096.878596384@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 3, 97 02:33:04 pm
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> Unless there are any truly serious objections, I'm going to starting > campaigning vigorously in core for the complete removal of this rather > useless collection of games which has gotten us in trouble not once > but now TWICE upon receipt of a letter from Hasbro's legal council > stating that we are violating the trademark on "Boggle", a Hasbro > game. Send them a letter back telling them that it is a component of a package which you do not control, and that it came from UCB. Due dilligince would require they protect their trademark everywhere. Probably some anal lawyer somewhere has been tasked with defending trademarks in a space where they weren't defended in preparation for computer rehashes of old games. You could also inform them that you are in an unrelated market segment, and that the trademark is market segment specific (cv: Apple Records, Inc. vs. Apple Computer Corp.), and you would be happy to remove the offending software when they port their commercial game -- that is now entering the previously non-conflicting space -- to FreeBSD. It's a very bad precedent when you allow legal bullying that is not legitimate (the lack of a Hasbro computer game Boggle up to this point means that the conflict didn't exist before this point). The problem, of course, is that you're vunerable to legal bullying, so you are a terrible champion for the rest of us. 8-(. The other problem is that the bully could use this fact to control you (assuming you react like this each time), and it wouldn't matter if they had a legal leg to stand on, you'd have to cave in if you were running from a purely risk-analysis position. How long before Microsoft decides it doesn't like FreeBSD shipping WINE, or that the ability of a FreeBSD box to act as a Windows 95 server instead of making the customer buy an NT RAS server "causes significant devaluation of the good name of Microsoft due to lack of support for important features, like Microsoft proprietary compression and enhanced PPP option negotiation"? > It looks like the folks at UCB who originally put this collection > together were as ignorant as it's possible to get about trademarks, > and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before another game from this > collection joins the ranks of tetris and boggle as "things which screw > up our CVS tree when we're forced to remove all traces of the damn > things." Bullshit. Hasbro was not competing in the computer game space at the time the program was written, just as Apple Computer was not competing in the Music industry at the time they chose their name, and so was not in violation of the "Apple" trademark of "Apple Records". Even if Hasbro *does* compete in the DOS computer game space" until they start competing in the "FreeBSD computer game space", the trademark space is non-conflicting. You should read the man page on "boggle"; it was written in 1993 when it was just "Parker Brothers". So when are you going to remove all traces of "YP", it being in violation of the British Telecom trademark? > Adding this to the fact that the "games" there are antiquated and > probably never actually played by anyone suggests, to me, a strong > need to simply nuke the bloody things once and for all and stop > distributing games from anywhere but /usr/ports/games (where fortune, > arguably one of the few "games" still in wide use, could easily be > moved). Move "boggle" to ports as well, then, and get it from gatekeeper.dec.com, if you are so damn paranoid. It's not so much as "where to start" that pisses me off, but "where you, personally, will stop". How non-critical to you, personally, does a standard-since-time-immemorial system component have to be before some legal Leprechaun waving what he claims is an invisible magic Shellaleigh (but is really his fist) can not get you to dike it out as a paniced reflexive reacion?!? Sorry, but this type of thing is too like the USL vs. UCB suit for me to be happy with it... 8-(. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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