[HN Gopher] Rust Trademark Policy Updates
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Rust Trademark Policy Updates
Author : PeterWhittaker
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-11-10 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foundation.rust-lang.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (foundation.rust-lang.org)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > The crates prefixes "rust-" and "cargo-" are no longer reserved
| to the Rust Project.
|
| Gosh they really should have used namespaces, huh.
| melony wrote:
| There's nothing stopping them from just adding the feature like
| npm.
| dathinab wrote:
| There are plans to add namespaces AFIK, they are just quite
| early stage.
|
| Through for a long time (part of rust developers) haven't
| been very happy with the idea. a stuff like `abcde/bar` vs.
| `abcbe/bar` are a total pain. But there where two points
| which pushed things in the direction of having them. 1)
| Differentiating between 1st and 3rd party extensions of a
| project (e.g. is actix-XXXX "blessed" by actix or not) 2)
| companies want this for a bunch of reasons.
| nindalf wrote:
| This subject is a touchy one because it usually attracts a lot of
| people who are upset because they think they've lost something
| they had. A lot of those comments start with "I'm not a lawyer
| but ..."
|
| Then all of these upset people writing angry comments creates an
| impression of drama. Then reaction streamers on YouTube read
| these comments out and get their viewers riled up over a non
| issue. That's when the real drama starts.
|
| I'd urge people to remember that this policy is very similar to
| the Python Foundation. If Rust is doomed to be only as successful
| as Python that's not a terrible outcome.
| jchw wrote:
| Oh, Rust will _definitely_ not fail _because_ of trademark
| policies like this, anymore than Python succeeded _because_ of
| trademark policies. In fact I think it 's literally the
| opposite; seeing policies like this being set up is a sign that
| the project is wildly successful. I suspect Guido van Rossum
| was not worried about uses of the non-existent Python trademark
| in the late 80s.
|
| The Rust foundation would have a hard time destroying Rust's
| momentum even if they wanted to.
| nindalf wrote:
| You've misread my comment.
|
| I definitely think this policy is a step in the right
| direction.
|
| My reference to python is a response to people claiming that
| rust will fail because of this trademark policy. If Python
| didn't fail because of their similar policy, then Rust won't
| either.
| jchw wrote:
| I didn't misread your comment: I'm not really concerned
| with whether or not the policy is considered a step in the
| right direction or not, just suggesting that it really
| doesn't matter at all to the success or failure of Rust.
|
| Furthermore, Python is a pretty bad example. The Python
| Software Foundation has had multiple high-profile instances
| of reasonable outcry. See: DjangoCon Africa, or the banning
| of Tim Peters. The Python Software Foundation exists
| because of the tremendous success of Python, not because of
| the tremendous success of their policies.
| nindalf wrote:
| Yeah I read your top level comment complaining about a
| "power grab". You're welcome to get worked up over a non
| issue. I won't spend any time convincing you otherwise.
| jchw wrote:
| Convince me of what?
|
| What's the point of a reply like this?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| we're not on reddit. I see nothing like what you're talking
| about here.
|
| Like most legalese CYA, the rules sound fine as long as they
| don''t use it to copyright troll everything under the sun. So
| it's more on how/where Rust enforces this than on the rules
| themselves. Those who profit from drama will find drama no
| matter what, so their opinions aren't worth consideration.
| nindalf wrote:
| Obviously I was talking about previous threads on this
| subject.
|
| Check out this one
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35583089) which is
| summarised by the top comment
|
| > This whole thread went to hell. There's like 2-3 people
| that are really vested about this situation and have made
| posts, and articles elsewhere that make their viewpoints seem
| bigger. Also the biggest comment thread is about a gun rights
| tangent. GG.
|
| Are you convinced now? Or do you still stand by your "we're
| not on reddit"?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I apologize for missing a thread from 18 months ago.
|
| >Are you convinced now? Or do you still stand by your
| "we're not on reddit"?
|
| I still stand by it. Even taking that comment at face value
| it's saying that it's a matter of 2-3 people who fit my
| description of "they are incentivized to cause drama". I am
| a bit saddened that so many "took the bait" (the blog post
| that post links to really didn't offer much insight nor
| curiosity), but no forum will be perfect.
| toast0 wrote:
| Having a written, easily found, trademark policy is actually
| nice. Especially when it's reasonable.
|
| There's plenty of drama around, but I don't really see this
| kind of trademark policy sparking much. But, maybe I
| misunderestimate the drama seekers.
| jchw wrote:
| Most interesting bit to me is this.
|
| > Using the Rust trademarks for social and small non-profit
| events like meetups, tutorials, and the like is allowed for
| events that are free to attend. Your materials for the event must
| not imply that the event is officially endorsed or run by the
| Rust Project or Rust Foundation unless you have written
| permission. For commercial events (including sponsored ones),
| please check in with us.
|
| It sort of reminds me of Nintendo's awkward rules for community-
| ran tournaments of their games (which, well, pretty much make it
| impossible to do sustainably.)
|
| I see their point (someone might mistake something called e.g.
| "New York Rust Conference" for being official) but using
| trademark to enforce rules on unofficial events is an interesting
| maneuver that seems to me to be relatively recent.
|
| Go's trademark policy has a similar looking rule:
|
| > The Go word mark may be used referentially in events, community
| groups, or other gatherings related to the programming language,
| but it may not be used in a manner that implies official status
| or endorsement.
|
| At this point, it sounds more permissive: seems like it blanket
| allows uses to just refer to it if it's clear that it's not
| official.
|
| > [...] Events and community groups may be subject to the Go
| programming language's Code of Conduct, and violations of the
| Code of Conduct may be deemed incompatible with use of the Go
| Trademarks.
|
| But then there's this, which seems to imply that your ability to
| use the Go trademark in reference to Go in a way that doesn't
| make your event sound official still obligates you to adhere to
| their Code of Conduct when conducting your event.
|
| So it seems like this is a new part of the metagame.
|
| I've not paid attention to policies like these. Could someone
| with more experience help me understand the context here?
| Specifically:
|
| - Is this a new tactic, at least in terms of open source
| communities? It seems like it _to me_. In ~2010 it felt like open
| source was more fork-happy, ad-hoc and less governance-oriented,
| but now every other project has corporate backing, multiple
| committees, Code of Conducts, etc. Is the use of trademark and
| brand rules to exercise some control over the ecosystem new? Did
| someone pioneer it?
|
| - Also, is there an inspiration for this tactic? e.g. is it
| inspired by a specific incident or state of affairs? Have these
| rules actually ever been used to do anything?
|
| I'm guessing the real answer is that they just don't want to
| explicitly give up the ability to exercise these rules, but I'm
| not sure and I don't know how to look.
|
| Either way, it's interesting to see committees and foundations
| going for these sorts of power grabs. It doesn't look like this
| is the case for _all_ programming languages which have trademarks
| owned by some entity; C++ has a trademark policy, but it doesn 't
| seem to have any restrictions regarding uses of the name that
| don't imply direct affiliation.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > - Is this a new tactic, at least in terms of open source
| communities
|
| Large open source projects have trademarks since forever.
| Nothing seems particularly novel here.
| jchw wrote:
| That's not a fair characterization. Large open source
| projects haven't even existed forever! And none of the
| obvious large open source projects from the earlier days
| started out having foundations or trademarks. Clearly, it had
| to have a genesis somewhere.
| II2II wrote:
| I don't know if this is the genesis, but the first time
| this came to my attention was with Linux. Basically: a
| third-party trademarked Linux several years after the
| project's origin, then started going after companies that
| were distributing Linux. Legal battle ensued. Linus
| Torvalds was eventually assigned the trademark. Innocence
| lost.
|
| Trademarks likely existed for (what we would now call) open
| source software prior to that, but I think Linux was a
| turning point since it meant that community (rather than
| commercial) software now had to consider such prospects.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Either way, it's interesting to see committees and
| foundations going for these sorts of power grabs.
|
| I really hate thinking of this sort of stuff as a power grab.
| Unlike copyright, trademarks are something that is useful for
| the consumer/user. I want to know whether something is official
| or not, and throwing a trademark around ruins that.
|
| For uses of trademarks that make it clear that they are not
| official uses, it doesn't even matter what the trademark
| owner's policy is because they don't have a legal leg to stand
| on. People have the right to refer to you no matter what you
| think. That being said, when you're _not_ talking about FOSS
| stuff, people have the right to pull your licensing if you don
| 't abide by their policies. But when it's FOSS, there's nothing
| they can do about it.
|
| There is nothing to any of these FOSS foundations _other_ than
| their trademarks. They exist to decide what they approve of and
| what they disapprove of, and allowing the mark is how they make
| that clear. You can fork everything that they have, change
| "Rust" to "Bust," register the "Bust Foundation," and name
| yourself president, all in the same day. The Bust Foundation
| will be no less legitimately a steward of the code than the
| Rust Foundation. But I'll be sticking with the Rust Foundation,
| at least for now, and the mark helps me do that.
| jchw wrote:
| It sounds like a powergrab to me, but there's some nuance to
| it. Look at it this way:
|
| > Your materials for the event must not imply that the event
| is officially endorsed or run by the Rust Project or Rust
| Foundation unless you have written permission.
|
| You can't imply an event is official without permission. Very
| reasonable. Not a powergrab. This is the same sort of thing
| that Firefox does to prevent modified versions of Firefox
| from being called Firefox.
|
| > For commercial events (including sponsored ones), please
| check in with us.
|
| But then there's this. This implies that there are extra
| rules for an event that is "commercial" _even if_ it does not
| try to pretend to be an official event; merely using the
| trademark and being a commercial event would compel you to
| adhere to some other set of rules, which they didn 't even
| write in the policy.
|
| On its face, that doesn't sound unreasonable, but I imagine
| the net cast over what counts as "commercial events" probably
| makes very few reasonable events possible that wouldn't fall
| under this umbrella.
|
| It's an interesting choice in my opinion.
| II2II wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this has more to
| do with grifters and griefers than it does about power. Those
| are people who have the potential to create a lot of expensive
| headaches or public relations headaches for the organizations
| supporting their respective languages since the grifters and
| griefers are only concerned about their own motivations (profit
| or otherwise).
|
| C++ is an entirely different thing. Even though it is backed by
| a standards body, it is far less centralized. Most people
| associate C++ with a language and I doubt that there are very
| many people who view it as a project backed by a particular
| organization.
| Palomides wrote:
| not new, e.g.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_trade...
| jchw wrote:
| This is the first thing that came to mind for me too.
| However, I am distinguishing this particular case (e.g.
| enforcing that you don't use trademarks in a way that would
| imply something is official) with the Rust/Go/Python
| trademark policies (e.g. enforcing a set of rules when using
| a trademark to refer to something in a clearly unofficial
| context.)
| IshKebab wrote:
| > using trademark to enforce rules on unofficial events ...
| seems to me to be relatively recent.
|
| It isn't. It's completely standard practice. Python uses it in
| the same way and you probably didn't even notice (and Go as you
| discovered).
|
| It's not a new tactic. It's literally what trademark law is
| designed for.
| jchw wrote:
| It's completely standard practice now, but since when? It
| didn't start this way because open source projects didn't
| used to be so big that they had foundations and trademarks.
|
| Furthermore, I think there's a bit of nuance that people
| continue to miss: I'm not referring to having trademark
| rules. I am familiar with Linux and Mozilla, arguably the
| earliest "open source" organizations to deal with trademarks
| and have trademark policies.
|
| What I'm referring to more specifically is what Go and Rust
| are doing for events: they seem to be applying additional
| rules for events that use the trademark in a way that does
| not imply affiliation. I think this is something that has not
| _generally_ been the case for open source trademarks.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| It's not entirely a new thing for Rust, at any rate. The
| current trademark policy [1] is very similar:
|
| > Using the Rust trademarks (even in modified form) for social
| events like meetups, tutorials, and the like is allowed for
| events that are free to attend.
|
| [1]: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/policies/logo-policy-and-
| me...
| samatman wrote:
| Looking forward to the Crab language, with its excellent package
| management system, baggage.
| pezezin wrote:
| Crab was a tantrum that, as expected, went nowhere. Why people
| play this silly games is something that I will never
| understand.
| hvenev wrote:
| The part of the policy about distributing modified versions of
| the Rust compiler seems interesting:
|
| > Publicly distributing a modified version of the Rust
| programming language, compiler, or the Cargo package manager,
| provided that the modifications are limited to:
|
| > - code adjustments for the purpose of porting to a different
| platform, architecture, or system, or integrating the software
| with the packaging system of that platform
|
| It looks like distributing a modified version with any change
| that isn't related to compatibility with a different
| platform/architecture/system is not allowed. This would probably
| make almost all GitHub forks of Rust non-compliant.
| tredre3 wrote:
| I don't think we can argue in good faith that those forks are
| publicly distributing a modified version of the rust
| programming language, unless they actually publish releases.
| hvenev wrote:
| I don't know, to me it just seems like a plausible
| interpretation:
|
| - In GitHub, forks of public repositories are themselves
| public repositories.
|
| - GitHub repositories can be cloned, which is a form of
| distribution.
|
| - Therefore any fork that implements, for example, a change
| to the programming language itself, but still uses the name
| "Rust", is distributing a modified version of the programming
| language in a manner that is not allowed.
|
| I sincerely hope that this is not the interpretation taken by
| the Rust Foundation, but I cannot know for sure. It seems
| very open to selective enforcement.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's an argument a lawyer could make in court with a
| straight face. But that's not the same as an argument
| likely to win in court. The fundamental purpose of
| trademark is protecting commercial purity of a product; a
| GitHub fork whose relation to the original is pretty
| clearly stated and isn't trying to present itself as a
| viable alternative to the original is just unlikely to be
| seen as in the purview of trademark protection in the first
| place.
|
| Arguing that it's covered because it's distribution
| requires chaining through a few overly literal definitions
| to achieve that result, and that isn't likely to be winning
| argument against a gut instinct of "no, it's just not."
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| in good faith, no. Legally, yes.
|
| But legalities have its costs as well. is it worth it to go
| after some random student project with no stars on it?
| Absolutely not. I imagine that's the bulk of those github
| forks.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The way I read it the intent is to ensure there is one
| sanctioned version of Rust, if you change the compiler to
| accept other syntax, different file types etc you have to call
| it by another name. You can still say that it's written in rust
| and compatible to rust, but you can't call it rust. A weaker
| version of that policy Firefox had for a while.
|
| Maybe the exact wording needs some refinement. Allowing
| repositories that are marked as forks for example.
| dathinab wrote:
| > The way I read it the intent is to ensure there is one
| sanctioned version of Rus
|
| basically that
|
| Through it's very annoying that it needs refinement _again_
| and _again_ every f* time they update the trademark policy.
|
| Like why
|
| - is there no exception for research (i.e. science) use, as
| long as explicitly labeled at such
|
| - public development forks which are used to prototype
| directions rust could go into, again if clearly labeled as
| such and not maintained as forks (through to be fair the line
| between a public experimental rust development fork and an
| early rust "full" fork are thin)
|
| - wrt. software compatibility allowance why is it limited to
| the "packaging system of that platform" can't I fork to idk.
| create compatibility with a code analysis tool, changes I
| then later want to upstream but first need to test so need to
| distribute to various people?
|
| and sure you will normally get written permission for all the
| cases above, just the chance that someone could abuse this
| preventing you from doing very reasonable thing is IMHO an
| issue. I really don't want to see a headline like "rust
| forbids <company> from creating a compatible code analysis
| tool because <some stupid issue>".
| yuliyp wrote:
| This is a trademark policy, not a copyright license (Rust
| is distributed under MIT and Apache licenses, which are
| quite liberal in what you are allowed to do). You're
| welcome to make changes and distribute the modified
| versions, but you do have to be clear to people that it's
| not Rust, but DathinabRust etc.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Rust? No, this is IronOxide(tm)
| mjw1007 wrote:
| Note that part is unchanged from the current trademark policy
| here: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/policies/logo-policy-
| and-me...
|
| (Except the current policy says "Distributing" rather than
| "Publicly distributing".)
| hyperman1 wrote:
| What I am missing here is something like the Java TCK or ISO C:
| You can call this a compiler that implements the rust language
| iff it adheres to this specification and passes this suite of
| test. I really want to see things like a gcc rust be viable, even
| in a hypothetical universe where the rust foundation would do
| everything to thwart their existence (to be clear: I am not
| saying they are).
| nindalf wrote:
| No one is thwarting anything. You want a GCC implementation of
| Rust? Check out this blog post published on the official Rust
| blog 3 days ago - gccrs: An alternative compiler for Rust
| (https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/11/07/gccrs-an-
| alternative-c...). They are perfectly welcome to create this
| alternate compiler.
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