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

Sat Feb 7 17:03:17 PST 2015

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
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://live.osgeo.org
> > http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc

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