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posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the thank-you dept.

After the uproar on the internet covered here yesterday, Groupon appears to be backing down on its Gnome trademarks, and says it will choose a new name going forward.

https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-and-groupon-product-names/#updated

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GNOME vs. Groupon 76 comments

The GNOME Project is currently grappling with Groupon, which has registered a series of new "GNOME" trademarks in response to GNOME's request that Groupon rename its new POS system.

From the gnome.org announcement:

"Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications."

GNOME claims that it will need $80,000 to challenge ten of the new trademarks that Groupon has filed.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:32PM (#115166)

    Will the GNOME project now do the right thing and return any donations made to fund the legal costs that were initially anticipated?

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:13PM (#115176)

      They stated that wouldn't on their donation page, before this happened. Said if they got more money then they needed for legal, it would be used for GNOME stuff.

      • (Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:13PM

        by arashi no garou (2796) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:13PM (#115199)

        Thus feeding the delusions of conspiracy theorists who will say that this was all orchestrated to get more money into Gnome for their SJW campaigns. *sigh*

        • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:18PM

          by Lagg (105) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:18PM (#115235) Homepage Journal

          Even though I'm too disgusted with this stuff to really care one way or another and just generally try to stay away from it for sake of sanity. You shouldn't dismiss and exaggerate pretty severe issues as conspiracy theories. I'd have thought we would have learned that by now. Given that groupon explicitly made moves to claim the trademark it's kind of stupid to say it's "orchestrated". But it's not stupid to think that the money will be wasted towards things not even vaguely related to software, such as aforementioned campaigns. They've spent most of their budget on such things and then gave actual software the table scraps as clearly laid out by their financial reports [soylentnews.org].

          But if people wanted to have such delusions I've seen ones that are less true. So at least there's that. I kind of wish that gnome would have just lost and lost severely. It's a terrible thing to say but they're eating so much money up right now that more deserving projects would probably appreciate. Imagine how far that $260K or even the $40K for this trademark thing would have went for libressl for example.

          --
          http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
          • (Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:38PM

            by arashi no garou (2796) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:38PM (#115313)

            Oh believe me, I'm with you on being disgusted with it all. I thought that would show in the sarcastic bent of my post. I'm sick of hearing about systemd, Gnome, gamergate, the whole shebang. I stopped using Gnome and switched to XFCE when 3.0 was released, I quit using Arch Linux when they switched to systemd (and will soon stop using Debian and Ubuntu and go 100% Slackware), and I feel terrible for the women victimized by trolls but I've turned off any source of news on that subject as I'm just plain done with it.

            My post wasn't meant to be taken seriously, so I'm sorry about that. I've just heard it all this week, and was venting some frustration.

            • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:58PM

              by Lagg (105) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:58PM (#115320) Homepage Journal

              I saw the sarcasm but I just can't tell the context. This tends to happen to me a lot when it comes to this stuff because I've seen so much insanity in discussions even slightly related. But yeah I have much the same feeling. I'm even one of the types that thinks systemd can be fixed and has potential as recent cleanup releases have proven but even then I'm tired of it being shoved down my throat and as for gamergate I'm still not even 100% sure what it is. Kind of wondering if people partaking do either. I understand wanting to vent frustration though. I almost decided to take a vacation from soylent even because of it. Which would have pretty much left me a few scattered blogs and IRC channels to get my discussion from.

              --
              http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
              • (Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Wednesday November 12 2014, @11:11PM

                by arashi no garou (2796) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @11:11PM (#115362)

                I'm even one of the types that thinks systemd can be fixed

                I have hopes for that too, but I don't see it happening. It exists for a very specific reason, and that reason has a lot to do with a certain few peoples' egos. But yeah, I'm pretty much over it. I've chosen to avoid it by sticking with conservative distros/OSes, and that way it can't get on my nerves quite so much.

                As for the gamergate thing, I'm definitely sympathetic to the women involved, but it has been talked about to death and I'm so over it. It got so bad at one point that I chose to leave OSNews permanently, as it seemed that site was becoming gamergateNews instead. I didn't realize how toxic the community there was until I stepped back from it. I feel refreshed and genial instead of depressed and angry nowadays. I know that wasn't the full source of my mental state back then, but it is one less burden on my mind.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:32PM

    by dyingtolive (952) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:32PM (#115167)

    Any inadvertent name association with GNOME would probably prove harmful to Groupon's brand.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
    • (Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:02PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:02PM (#115266)

      LOL yes, groupon's new point of sale system's fourth backup name, "System D", will surely have less negative connotations.

  • (Score: 2) by Techwolf on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:40PM

    by Techwolf (87) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @01:40PM (#115170)

    Darn it. I was hoping Groupon would bankrupt GNOME or at least expose GNOME for what it is.

    Am I the only one hoping GNOME would lose this battle?

    • (Score: 2) by E_NOENT on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:36PM

      by E_NOENT (630) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:36PM (#115189) Journal

      It sure would've been some good lulz...

      --
      I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
    • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:20PM

      by Lagg (105) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:20PM (#115239) Homepage Journal

      Nope. [soylentnews.org] Sorry for so many chains of links to my own comments but what else is there to say honestly?

      --
      http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:33PM (#115282)

      You aren't alone.

      GNOME embodies everything that is wrong with open source software today:

      - Disregarding the users.
      - Forcing dumb and unwanted UI changes on the users.
      - Destroying previously good software.
      - Hipsters.
      - Social "justice".
      - The use of systemd.
      - The destruction of the Debian project and distro.

      We'd be better off without GNOME, in my opinion. I think it only brings us pain and problems these days.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:41PM

        by M. Baranczak (1673) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:41PM (#115288)

        Dude, get a grip already. Yeah, the new Gnome sucks, but nobody's forcing you to use it. Switching to a different desktop is trivial, and there's plenty of good alternatives.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:51PM

        by arashi no garou (2796) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:51PM (#115316)

        The use of systemd.

        This is one that I simply don't get. Why tie your DE to an init system? Even if I was fine with running systemd, why should the DE and init have any impact on each other?

        Of course I know the answer: By tying the two together, systemd is forced upon even more distros. Basically any distro that wants to offer Gnome as an option must now fully support systemd. Given that Gnome is the second most used DE, that's a pretty big fucking deal. Now, to avoid systemd you have to not only find a distro that either lets you build from the kernel up (Gentoo, LFS) or has taken an anti-Gnome and/or anti-systemd stance (Slackware), you have to hope that those distros don't cave to the pressure. And honestly, that's the only thing I truly hate about systemd: One day I won't have a choice but to run it if I want to use GNU/Linux, unless the above distros hold firm on their positions. BSD is always an option, but that's little comfort these days.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:04PM (#115174)

    Enlightenment

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:58PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:58PM (#115193) Journal
      Ntzz... nope...
      I'm keeping my fingers crossed for their next choice to be... systemd.
      If it happens, I'll gladly contribute to Groupon's legal offence fund.
      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by NezSez on Wednesday November 12 2014, @11:09PM

        by NezSez (961) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @11:09PM (#115361) Journal

        or systemd could change it's name to gropeon.
        Pronounced "grope on", although "grow peon" works too.

        --
        No Sig to see here, move along, move along...
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:35PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:35PM (#115252)

      Given their intended pronunciation (know-me) I would think Knome would be preferable on many fronts, not least of which is the fact that it's not a preexisting generic word with four centuries of history behind it, and is thus eligible for a legitimate trademark. Ever notice how Microsoft has consistently settled in *any* case that might challenge the legitimacy of their "Windows" trademark?

      Of course Knome sounds like some sort of bastard love-child desktop to me (and actually one that might have a lot of promise), but then I'm not exactly the target customer for a POS system.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:14PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:14PM (#115177) Journal

    I speculate, but of course cannot substantiate, that following discussions with their legal team Groupon realised that they could very easily lose this particular battle. It makes sense to have a change of heart, especially as it gives them an opportunity to proclaim how much they support FOSS, and everyone can continue without any ill feelings. I think GNOME did the right thing by showing that they were prepared to defend their 'trademark'.

  • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:40PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:40PM (#115190)

    After Gnome 3, that trademark is associated with a disaster and too tainted to use. (Come on, you knew someone was going to say that.)

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:00PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:00PM (#115194) Journal

      After Gnome 3, that trademark is associated with a disaster

      Only with one? You're too kind.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford