By Dave Whitinger
Carrying through their mission to protect Free Software and the
Open Source mark, Software in the Public Interest is currently
drafting a legal letter to Al Gore, requesting that corrections be
made to Mr. Gore’s “Open Source”
website.
J.H.M. Dassen opens the discussion by observing, “I strongly
doubt this fits the Open Source definition, and I suspect this will
be yet another contributing factor to the effective watering down
of the meaning of “Open Source” to “meaningless buzzphrase” in the
public’s mind if it isn’t corrected. Could someone please draft a
nice letter encouraging Mr. Gore(‘s campaign team) to use “Open
Source” in accordance with the service mark, or refrain from using
it?”
Brent Fulgham has responded with a draft of the letter that will
be sent to Al Gore.
In accordance with United States law, a trademark holder must
defend that mark or the mark becomes void and un-enforcable. The
process of contacting Al Gore about this issue is a necessary and
responsible thing to do.
Update:J.H.M. Dassen has written in with
addition information:
Not quite. I posted to the
spi-general@lists.spi-inc.org mailing list asking if someone could
draft a letter regarding this issue (as SPI board members are very
busy people, it would be easiest to present them with a more or
less finished letter to send).spi-general is a mailing list open to the public, for those that
are interested in SPI. Viewpoints expressed there, or actions
proposed there do not necessarily reflect the views of SPI. (See
http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/spi-general-9904/threads.html
; for some reason the webmasters haven’t gotten arround to moving
the SPI lists archives to www.spi-inc.org)At the moment, SPI == the SPI board of directors. Everyone
agrees that this has to change, and that participating members of
the free software community should be able to join SPI as members.
Proposals for changing SPI’s structure are being discussed on the
spi-general list.
Russ Nelson of OSI has already sent out a letter to Al Gore,
relieving SPI of the responsibility.