Open Source Trademark Issues

You named your open source software after a trademark?

Can you trademark open source project names?

Trademark law should handle this (at least in some countries). Register a trademark and then send a cease and desist to the fork as they are creating confusion in the marketplace by distributing something they created using your registered name.Perhaps consider using Apache 2.0 license, section six has language that specifically addresses trademarks.

The 'fire and brimstone' commment was responding the comment about an 'open-source project' bearing the same name.Which is not unreasonable. That moved the discussion from a single module to an entire project.Furthermore, since companies are actually required to enforce trademarks, the comment is nothing more of a reminder of what would necessarily have to happen. It's not like they could just ask the lawyers not to enforce the trademark.

It seems like the distro name may violate the Git trademark policy [0]. From [1]:> ... you can't use the mark in a way that implies association with or endorsement by the Git project.It might be worth checking with the Git project to see if they would approve this use or find it within their allowed uses.

But look, if I started a company called McDonald's, everyone would be confused and it'd probably be illegal. Complaining on forums about names is the open source community's alternative to trademarks.

The project might need a different name that doesn't contain "Git". Github and older trademarks have been grandfathered in.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289138

Absolutely.1. Just read the license. Never is a trademark granted. Source code can and is granted completely independently of trademarks (otherwise, as one example, how does Apple license iOS SDKs without permission to use the name “Apple”? It’s just a more stringent license than a FOSS one.)2. It’s already happened, Debian wanted to change Firefox, Mozilla said no, lo and behold we had “Iceweasel” for a decade.<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93

If this is a pure trademark issue, what keeps the "ticked off" organizations from forking the project under a non-trademarked name? Just call it cloudweasel, or something.

Similar to this advice, don't ask us.This whole thread is a question for a lawyer.But for real...just change the name of your project. It sucks, but the ruling was handed down, you lost the dispute.Nobody's going to mind that the name changed. Firefox used to be called Firebird and changed due to trademark disputes. Dozens of open source projects have changed their names when they forked off of a corporate project, like LibreOffice and MariaDB.I know that OP may be fond of