[JDEV] Jabber, the Name

[Bill Farrell]

Hi Flora,

Well, a lot of points are being made and it's easy to miss one :-)

I apologise for the late response, but I was away from my mailbox yesterday.
But a good email deserves a response:

At the end of the day, who CARES what name is on the outside?  If a product
has quality, reliability, serves a purpose without costing maintenance or
huge licence overheads, it will sell (or in this case, ubiquitise) itself.
It doesn't matter if it's called the DoggyDoo Messenger/Server...if it WORKS
well, it will be adopted by many communities on sheer force of excellence.

Just because someone else wants to control a name doesn't prevent the team
from increasing quality both in the open-source code and the documentation.
If the other bunch want the name so badly, then p*$$ on them and let them
have it.  Go on and refine the product you have in hand, see that it's
rock-solid and readily available.  See who wins.

My money is on the open-source team, NOT a corporation.  Just because they
MIGHT have the upper hand on a name is a pretty lousy excuse for not taking
responsibility for refining the open source.

Now, I came in late on the thread and don't have ALL the details, but it
seems to me that Jabber.com would be wise to realign their thinking toward
support contracts and distribution channels.  Not mucking about with who
controls what name and what set of code.  Please read my prior post for why
I feel that this is the case.  In summary, if you have the better quality
and availability, your product will win REGARDLESS of the name.

I'm speaking strictly as someone who runs an ISP business, not as a
JDev-team developer.  With the great potential in the product itself, the
good that it can do in this world, I think our time would be much better
spent in polishing what's already in-hand.

Yes, it would be lovely (in the Ideal World) to have original name and
original code together.  It doesn't go that way in the "real" world where we
implementers live away from the developers.  Having worked on both sides of
that fence for hermmpphlffmf years, I understand the desire of the
developers to leave things alone and let the name and code do what they were
originally intended.

Add a corporation to the mix and your life WILL change.  

As a matter of fact, I'm personally defending a registered service mark
against an out-and-out theft.  What's going on in my business seems to me to
be a vastly different situation as we have here.  You have open source in
hand...that can't be taken back.  However, depending on how the Mark was
registered, by whom, and how, you may or may not have some claim to the name
regardless of registration.  And if the name was going to be an issue, why
didn't the JDev team lodge an objection with the registering authority?  In
the U.S., the name must be published for at least 6 months running with no
objections before it can become a Mark.  Where was everyone then?

Even after a Mark is registered, you MAY have recourse if you can prove that
you were using the name, Mark, logo, etc, publicly and IN COMMERCE before
the registration occurred.  It's painful to prove, because you must produce
evidence that you were using the name/logo/Mark publicly and in commerce
before the registration occurred.  A lot of times it's difficult to prove
more than "He said/She said" and a court of law will require more than that.

At the end of the day, ask this question:  Is it worth pursuing?  I heartily
doubt it.  They can cost you right out of house and home (let alone the
product) with endless motions and continuances.  The project dies over a
silly dispute and everybody loses.

Either decide to use the name and legally defend it, or reincarnate this
wonderful system into a new guise Formerly Known As...

Again, we stand ready to help where we can.

Respectfully,
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Flora Brunas [mailto:floraaquino at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 6:08 PM
To: jdev at jabber.org
Subject: RE: [JDEV] Jabber, the Name


Bill,

I think you're missing the point.

A major reason why Jabber transports have trouble,
things aren't documented, and you're running into
other technical problems is because Jabber.com
prevents other corporations from using the Jabber
name.

If companies can't use the word "Jabber", they have no
incentive to join the Jabber Community and offer
source code, documentation, enhancents back to the
community.

Lets let other corporations know that they're welcome
into the Jabber Community and have the same rights as
Jabber.Com to use the word "Jabber" in their product
names, URLs, company names, slogans, etc.  

By building the Jabber Community to include more
corporations, Jabber will become more stable, powerful
and ubiquitous.

Flora

--- Bill Farrell <billfarr at ages.com> wrote:
> Just as an outside observation (donning heavy,
> flame-retardant clothing), it
> seems to me that time would be better spent in
> getting the transports to
> work correctly before worrying about what to call
> the thing.  Aside from the
> basic, core jabberd and JUD (the two of which are
> dead-easy-work-first-time-no-brains-needed), none
> (NONE!) of the other
> provided transports work and there's no CORRECT
> documentation to tell
> someone how to do a few simple cookbook configs.  
> 
> Even more egregiously, there are no documents
> telling anyone how to
> interpret debug messages.  No offence, but "Merlin
> casts his spell" is
> hardly useful as a diagnostic.
> 
> Or better yet, spend some time refining
> documentation, rather than kvetching
> about the name.  If you guys really want the project
> to succeed (and I
> FIRMLY believe that in time, it will), you might
> want to get your priorities
> in order.  Solve the problems with transports, fix
> the docs, provide more
> than very tiny, hastily-made, thumbnail HOWTO's;
> then worry about a
> cute-n-catchy name.  Believe me, most of us will
> pick "works" over "cute"
> any day.
> 
> As an ISP who really thinks that you have the start
> of a FANTASTIC product,
> I have to say there's a lot more to go in before the
> name goes on.  PLEASE
> don't fall into the M$ trap of coming up with a
> grand name, then have no
> real performance behind it.  What you have in-hand
> thus far is MUCH too good
> for that.  Respect the product, ensure that things
> that are supposed to be
> in it WORK (and work together), and somebody PLEASE
> come up with some
> documentation and support.
> 
> I'm sure we're not the only ISP anxiously awaiting a
> full-plate offering,
> complete with easily-configurable transports.  Most
> of us have a
> passing-but-workable understanding of XML--that's
> not the problem.  Even _I_
> can inspect a document for well-formedness (honest,
> I didn't sleep in XML
> class! Well, not ALL the way through...).  
> 
> In my defence, I've been configuring and compiling
> things for *nix for over
> 20 years.  If a reasonably-versed person like myself
> is having a great deal
> of trouble due to the paucity of "What to do when it
> blows up"
> documentation, think of the poor Linux newbie.  You
> may as well throw
> sendmail at 'em right out the box.  (Speaking of
> things that sorely need
> proper documentation!)
> 
> The problem is in when we attempt to configure
> things that would add REAL
> VALUE to the product.  Those external transports ARE
> real value from a
> small, independent ISP's viewpoint.  When the
> configs parse correctly
> (jabberd doesn't complain, that is) and are entered
> exactly as the example
> states (machine names excepted, of course) and the
> transport still doesn't
> work, there are NO diagnostics to tell us what we
> did wrong.  "Not
> configured" as an error message, when we can clearly
> see configs in the
> proper place (according to the slim HOWTO) and in
> the documented format,
> isn't a lot of help.
> 
> Running the jabberd in debug mode doesn't really
> help.  At no time did any
> ONE process complain of ill configuration with a
> message along the lines of
> "Hey, Stupid, fix <xxx/> in the config and this
> might work next time".  As
> much diagnostic as we were able to glean was
> "returning unhandled".
> 
> What was returning from where and why fillintheblank
> was unhandled, no clue
> was given.  If you want Jabber to catch on and be
> the thing to steamroll ICQ
> and AIM for flexibility and utility (it could, it
> could!), then there's a
> lot of setup work left to do.
> 
> Folks, I'd really like to see the Jabber project
> continue to evolve.  Rather
> than waste bandwidth on picking names and logos, we
> might want to focus on
> "what would make Jabber the next Ubiquitous Product
> On Every Desktop".  Like
> diagnostics and config help.
> 
> What can we do to pitch in and help?
> 
> With deepest respect,
> Bill
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Flora Brunas [mailto:floraaquino at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 2:37 PM
> To: jdev at jabber.org
> Subject: RE: [JDEV] Jabber, the Name
> 
> 
> Dixon,
> 
> Check out what Jabber.com has to say about the
> Jabber
> project being open source:
> 
> http://www.jabber.com/open_source/enterprise.shtml 
> 
> An open source project is a community.  Communities
> aren't controlled by a single corporation, which is
> why the Jabber Foundation is a great thing and the
> Foundation should control the use of the name
> "Jabber".
> 
> Flora
> 
> 
> --- Dixon Canario <Dixon at vitalcontact.com> wrote:
> > Why don't you all start your own project give it a
> > name, and make it open
> > source..... and then you will probably feel the
> same
> > way that the people
> > that work so hard to make the "jabber" name come
> to
> > live and that are also
> > sharing this project with all of us... for
> free....
> > and are now trying to
> > make money out of it..... why don't you just make
> > your own project and give
> > it your own name......  why you all have to be
> > trying to steal what belongs
> > to "Jabber.com" yeah is open source....  but it is
> > still their stuff.... if
> > you all keep complaining about something none of
> us
> > did or came out with the
> > idea of it..... they might just make it
> > "Closed-Source" ..... I just think
> > that all the ones talking about... Why Jabber owns
> > the name.. and all that
> > crap about the name... are nothing but a bunch of
> > Selfish .... Son Of
> > #@%!%.................. tha's just my opinion...
> so
> > stopped sending stuff
> > about  the Damn name and let's talk about coding
> > development and taking
> > Jabber to the next level...........
> > 
> > Peace Everyone.. and yes I'm ready for the
> > HEAT.......... so bring it on....
> >   -----Original Message-----
> >   From: jdev-admin at jabber.org
> > [mailto:jdev-admin at jabber.org]On Behalf Of
> > Jens Alfke
> >   Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 12:43 PM
> >   To: jdev at jabber.org
> >   Subject: Re: [JDEV] Jabber, the Name
> > 
> > 
> >   On Monday, May 14, 2001, at 12:48 PM, Flora
> Brunas
> > wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >     Is Jabber.com the only commercial company
> > allowed to
> >     use the word "Jabber" for their company names
> > and
> >     products? This is not fair.
> > 
> > 
> >   I agree. And this brings up a tangential
> question:
> > what are the rules for
> 
=== message truncated ===


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