Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:

Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

Wrong. Have you ever been on a road and encountered a fork
in the road? One road splits into two roads. If the main
road continues, that's called an intersection or offramp,
not a fork.

In source control terms, it is a branch.

While I am aware of that particular usage and have been
involved in projects where that usage is the norm,
I was using the terms as used by Linus Torvalds in
[ http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-12/msg00810.html ])

"Basically, by 'branch' I mean something that fundamentally
is part of the 'official site.' [...] A 'fork' is something
where people can just take the tree and do their own thing
to it." --Linus Torvalds

And as used in _To Fork or Not To Fork: Lessons From
Ubuntu and Debian_ by Benjamin "Mako" Hill
[ http://mako.cc/writing/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.html ]

"A fork occurs on the level of code but a fork is not
merely -- or even primarily -- technical. Many projects
create 'branches.' Branches are alternative versions
of a piece of software used to experiment with intrusive
or unstable features and fixes. Forks are distinguished
from branches both in that they are often more
significant departures from a technical perspective
(i.e., more lines of code have been changed and/or
the changes are more invasive or represent a more
fundamental rethinking of the problem) and in that
they are bifurcations defined in social and
political terms. Branches involve a single developer
or community of developers -- even if it does boil
down to distinct subgroups within a community --
whereas forks are separate projects." --Benjamin Mako Hill

And as used in the _Free Software Project Management
HOWTO_ by Benjamin "Mako" Hill
http://mako.cc/projects/howto/FreeSo...ent-HOWTO.html

"A fork is when a group of developers takes code from
a free software project and actually starts a brand
new free software project with it." --Benjamin "Mako" Hill

For those interested in learning more about Source
Control, there is an excellent Source Control HOWTO at
[ http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html ].

----------------------------------------------------

Then again, why try to introduce another term when the
person I am talking to (Pascal) refuses to accept some
rather basic concepts of fairness? I figured that
doing so would only muddy the water further.

To recap:

The author of an Open Source program stopped work for
personal reasons without naming someone to take over.

At least two people decided to continue the work, each
taking it in somewhat different directions.

The first author to start extending the program picked
a new name, clearly gave credit to the original author,
and made it clear that he is not the original author
and that his program is not the original program but is
instead a derivative work. He also set up a new
sourceforge page for the new derivative program.

The second author to start extending the program claims
that his derivative program and his alone is a new
version of the original program and that the first
author's derivative program is not. He attempted and
failed to take over the original author's sourceforge
page, then took the name of the original program as
the name of his derivative program without the permission
of the original author. He cannot have a sourceforge page
because sourceforge won't allow him to use the name of
an existing project.

To add insult to injury, the author of the second program
appears to have used the first as his starting point, not
the original program, and incorporated comments including
typos that are found only in the source code to the first
program.

Any elementary school student can see that this is simply
not fair. There is no reason to favor one author above
the other, no reason why one author or the other should be
the one allowed to take the name of the original program.
Even if there was a reason to favor one over the other the
first program has a slightly better claim to be the favored
one.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
I'm not going to spend a long time hunting for things but it's
implicit in

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac...c/register.htm
I just read the URL above very carefully. It appears to cover
several related things:

[1] Whether registration of a mark is required (no)

[2] How to establish rights in a mark (legitimate use)

No. `You can establish rights in a mark *based on* legitimate use.'
(My emphasis.) In other words, your legitimate use of a mark allows
you to establish rights. `Establish,' here, means `cause to come into
existence' rather than `demonstrate by argument.' It's the sense of
`Guy Macon Electronics Inc., Established 1983', not `I have
established that you are an electronic engineer.'


Dave.

--
David Richerby Sadistic Flower (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ flower but it wants to hurt you!