[Incubator] Trademarks (was Re: [Live-demo] Retire MapTiler from OSGeo-Live)

Sun Feb 8 17:09:12 PST 2015

Trademarks is one of those issues we tend to handle off-list with mentor
and project  leadership (and/or the board if required).

In this case the author and trademark owner in one in the same (and has a
fairly clear request).

My limited understanding is the board will need to care about trademarks in
source code that has been contributed to OSGe (which is not a requirement
of participation). I expect they will only need to care in the US (since
that is where the organization is based) but that is up to legal council,
IANAL etc...

It is relatively common for open source projects to be renamed due to TM
conflict. This is a service a software foundation can provide, apache has
strict management of trademarks, eclipse does a trademark check prior to
accepting a project into incubation etc... But it is not clear cut - Debian
for example refuses to include firefox as that name is trademarked (and not
"free" and reusable
<http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3634591> ),

--
Jody Garnett

On 7 February 2015 at 17:03, Even Rouault <even.rouault at spatialys.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> (adding incubator@ as it is both of interest I think for OSGeo-Live &
> incubator)
>
> I will not argue about this particular case, but this does raise an
> interesting question about how we should handle trademark issues (perhaps
> this
> has been discussed in the past, so sorry if I come after the battle)
>
> The OSGeo incubation application questionnaire
> http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/application.html mentions:
> "Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the
> copyright? "
>
> It does not address clearly the issue of trademark of the *name of the
> project* (it mentions just the *code*).
> I'm not sure if there should be a policy regarding ownership of the
> trademark
> of the name of a project, but at least it could be asked if there's a
> trademark on the name, and who owns it (and in which countries...) ? As the
> below example shows, this can have impact on the future of the project. But
> this is likely complex.
> - What if someone from a random country comes and says "eh this project
> conflicts with my trademark in Foobarland" ? Which countries should OSGeo
> care
> about ? Or perhaps this is too complex and the only real answer to those
> questions is when you are assigned to a court ;-)
> - And even if the trademark is owned by someone/an entity which is strongly
> related to the project, things can evolve over time. So shouldn't the
> trademark be transfered to OSGeo control to guarantee fairness of use ? But
> that would mean that OSGeo would have to pay the costs of registration.
>
> For the record, I did the exercice of quick searching which OSGeo projects
> are
> trademarked in France ( http://bases-marques.inpi.fr/ ) and it *seems*
> (only a
> search by a specialist in I.P would confirm it) that only QGIS and
> GeoMajas are
> (and both have E.U. wide validity). (There are unrelated matches for
> Geotools,
> Marble and OSSIM). OSGeo itself isn't trademarked. And apparently MapTiler
> neither.
>
> In the incubating projects, gvSIG is trademarked (E.U wide). Unrelated
> matches
> for "the zoo project" and OTB.  Rasdaman is registered in Germany.
>
> Even
>
>
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > Let me clarify the situation:
> >
> > - The original MapTiler (python + wxWidgets) is discontinued and
> > unfortunately it failed as an open-source project in my eyes. The
> software
> > attracted quite a lot of end users, but no 3rd party developers. There
> was
> > not a single commit from any third-party ever to the MapTiler project
> code
> > itself, probably because the graphical utility was used mostly by
> > non-programmers. The otherwise great project stalled for some time. I
> have
> > not seen how to move it forward without any financial support, while not
> > being a student anymore - and it made me really sad.
> >
> > - Since 2011, I work with my team on a completely new implementation of
> an
> > efficient tiling utility, the new MapTiler usable both from the
> > command-line as well as from the graphical user interface, written in C++
> > and QT. It is significantly faster, merges multiple files in different
> srs,
> > handles correctly dateline crossing and world maps, tiles in non-mercator
> > grids, it directly produces small and optimized jpg and pngs, it is
> > compatible with OGC WMTS, contains uploader to Amazon S3 and Google Cloud
> > Storage, supports different layers on different zoom levels (see
> > http://goo.gl/TCrGtQ and other tutorials), and it comes with many other
> new
> > features, with installers, regular updates, support and maintenance. It
> > runs on Win/Lin/Mac - see http://www.maptiler.com/ for more information.
> > With my colleagues we are trying to do our job as good as we can.
> > It is a complete rewrite of the original utility, fixing design flaws and
> > implementation issues of both GDAL2Tiles and original MapTiler. To be
> able
> > to support the utility and to work on new features we ask for a license
> > fee.
> >
> > - There was no financial support from Google Summer of Code nor from
> OSGeo
> > on the original MapTiler.
> >
> > -  Both my Google SoC in 2007 and 2008 were on the GDAL2TIles
> command-line
> > utility, lead by Howard.
> > My original GDAL2Tiles from 2007 is available at
> > http://www.klokan.cz/projects/gdal2tiles/ and the version from 2008 is
> > distributed together with GDAL library, with patches and some fixes,
> mostly
> > from Evan.
> > As Even pointed out - I started to work on the MapTiler during August
> 2008,
> > after the second SoC. BRGM mentioned in the code of GDAL2Tiles.py
> supported
> > improvements of GDAL2Tiles, not MapTiler project.
> >
> > - As the sole author of MapTiler and the owner of the MapTiler trademark
> I
> > would like to request complete removal of the MapTiler from the OSGeo
> > LiveDVD. I have prepared the existing .deb package as well as supplied
> the
> > quickstart and installation scripts to the svn about 5 years back.
> >
> > - If anybody is interested to revive my original open-source project
> > published under an open-source license, he is welcomed to do that - under
> > the conditions of the original license, while preserving the original
> > copyright notice, and under the condition his fork of the project is not
> > anymore called MapTiler and does not use original graphical elements and
> > desktop icon of the original application.
> >
> > - The existence of the two projects of the same name is confusing the
> > people and I want to avoid it. I hope you respect my decision. The old
> > MapTiler is dead, long live the MapTiler! ;-)
> >
> > - I continue to work on several other open-source projects and with my
> team
> > I keep developing, contributing and improving on OL3Cesium, OpenLayers
> V3,
> > WebGL Earth, EPSG.io, IIPImage, GDAL and other projects. See our github
> and
> > blog for details: http://www.klokantech.com/.
> > Open-source is indeed very powerful and viable on components and I can't
> > imagine to live without it. Still, there are situations, where it is
> simply
> > not applicable.
> >
> > I am proud to be part of OSGeo and I am keen to continue to contribute to
> > the community in future. I admire and honor people like Frank or Evan and
> > others. You have my true respect for what you do and what you have
> > achieved!
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Petr Pridal, Ph.D.
> > Klokan Technologies GmbH
> >
> > P.S.
> > If anybody is interested in even more background of the evolution of
> > MapTiler you can read:
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/maptiler/r9Xa8S_S4Z8/7pJoqKR1MM0J
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 9:24 PM, Cameron Shorter <
> cameron.shorter at gmail.com>
> >
> > wrote:
> > > I've had a request from the MapTiler project to have it removed from
> > > OSGeo-Live.
> > >
> > > I've raised a ticket:
> > > https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/1467
> > >
> > > I'll look after updating the docs.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Cameron Shorter,
> > > Software and Data Solutions Manager
> > > LISAsoft
> > > Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
> > > 26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009
> > >
> > > P +61 2 9009 5000,  W www.lisasoft.com,  F +61 2 9009 5099
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Live-demo mailing list
> > > Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org
> > > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/live-demo
> > > http://live.osgeo.org
> > > http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
>
> --
> Spatialys - Geospatial professional services
> http://www.spatialys.com
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>
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