[mkroot] hermatic

[Rob Landley]

On 03/18/2018 04:28 PM, scsijon wrote:
> /cut
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 20:48:01 -0500
>> From: Rob Landley <rob at landley.net>
>> To: mkroot at lists.landley.net
>> Subject: [mkroot] Tagged and pushed 0.5.0.
>> Message-ID: <ed083828-3ba7-8272-88c0-c58cfd229eae at landley.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>
>> Arbitrarily numered, I haven't hooked up the native build plumbing yet so this
>> is about half of what I mean to do, so...
>>
>> I'm looking at the Open Source Summit Japan CFP which closes tomorrow:
>> https://linuxfoundation.smapply.io/prog/open_source_summit_japan_2018/
>>
>> And wondering if I can get the rest of the LFS native plumbing in place in time
>> to give a talk about it there. I suppose I can submit the talk and see if it's
>> accepted, and then do the work if they say yes. :)
>>
>> I tested the following architectures under qemu 2.11.0:
>>
>>   aarch64 mips x86_64 armv5l i486 s390x armv7l i686 mipsel powerpc sh4
>>
>> And they all booted and ran, although sh4 is a bit broken (serial UART buffer
>> doesn't generate an interrupt unless it's full so you only get input you type in
>> blocks of 16 characters, there's no battery backed up clock, and the emulated
>> board only has 64 megs of ram). There are several more mcm-buildall.sh
>> architectures that don't finish building, and those don't work yet.
>>
>> I need to replace the rest of busybox with toybox. I need to get the kernel
>> configs doing the notick thing so qemu isn't eating CPU when idle. I need to
>> install make on the target and the native builds. I need to redo the
>>
>> And I need to rename the project to "hermetic", although my current
>> unicycle-shedding (I.E. bikeshedding with _myself_ because the stakes are too
>> small to make a clear winner obvious) is whether I should call it just hermetic
>> or "hermetic linux". (Or hermetic linux builder...)
> 
> One vote for "hermatic linux",

I'm not making up a spelling, no.

> hermatic, by itself, is too close to hermetic for
> the trademarks and copywrite people to allow,> and Hermetic GmbH has a world
> registration on their name. Trust me, you DON'T want to get on Trademarks and
> Copywrite Registration's bad side!

Trademarks have categories. Richard Garriot's computer game "Ultima II" didn't
stop a lipstick manufacturer from producing "Ultima II" lipstick a few years
later. I don't intend to ever make pumping equipment, and if I did obviously I
wouldn't call it something somebody who did was already using, so this wasn't an
issue.

Wasn't, past tense.

Thank you for doing the trademark equivalent of attempting to make infringement
willful by pointing out every patent I'm violating to triple the damages.

  http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0208.1/0768.html

I'd never heard of this company before and honestly could say that, but now
you've gone "ooh, your name puts 3 consecutive letters together and somebody
somewhere uses that as an acronym, let me make sure if they google their own
full name including the legal entity type, this message comes up talking about
their need to defend their trademarks!"

You think there's a dictionary word that ISN'T trademarked out there? Anywhere?
Trademarks having rigid limits which is why Cory Doctorow could do
http://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/ .

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin had a live comedy troupe called "mister sinus
theatre" for over 10 years, doing commentary over movies, until an idiot laywer
ASKED BEST BRAINS if they had an objection to the name (trying to clear the way
to put out recordings of the comedy that you'd play along with the movie, ala
rifftrax a few years later) and the best brains laywers aid "well we WERE
ignoring you, but now that you've forcibly brought it to our attention and
started the clock on potentially losing the trademark if we don't defend it, no
we can't allow you to use it anymore" and the drafthouse made them change their
name and they're "master pancake theatre" now. After 10 years of it being OK,
because some idiot aggro'd a lawyer.

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2004/08/30/daily16.html

I WAS NOT ASKING FOR LEGAL ADVICE FROM A NON-LAWYER. If that company's lawyers
google the company's full legal name, now they find your message saying they
need to defend their trademark. Thank you EVER SO MUCH. I wasn't looking to pick
a fight, but now using that name WOULD be picking a fight. And now any other
name I choose, anyone can assume I did a full trademark search on it when the
whole POINT is not to (Linus's policy) and... Ugh.

You know what? I've lost interest in this project now. I don't care what it's
called. I'll let you know if I start caring again, but it seems unlikely. I'm
just going to build my own systems in my own my little corner and not publish
any of it to anyone else so they CAN'T MAKE THIS KIND OF PROBLEM FOR ME.

Rob