Re: [Gimp-developer] [Gimp-user] What next after sourceforge.net?



On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer
<unhammer fsfe org> wrote:
Is trademarking completely out of the question? I see not only Firefox,
but ImageMagick, Inkscape, GNOME, GNU and Linux in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trademarked_open-source_software –
Inkscape being of similar "size" to GIMP, does anyone know how much work
it cost them to register their trademark, and how much it costs them to
keep it?

Reading through
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html#x1-60000k5
it doesn't look too bad in terms of money. (The whole section on
trademarks there is worth reading.)

Also, it seems you may in fact call it GIMP™ already, since you have
certain "unregistered rights" to the trademark just because GIMP has
been used by this project as a trademark in practice. (But "®" requires
registering.)

If you have a trademark, but never object to anyone using it in
commercial/confusing settings, it might get lost. But you can avoid
having to explicitly say yes to every distro and similar "good usage" by
having a simple license like GNOME does:
https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/FoundationBoard/Resources/LicensingGuidelines
See also https://www.gnome.org/logo-and-trademarks/

GIMP has existed for two decades in a decentralized ad-hoc manner
without needing to incorporate as a legal person/entity in either the
US or elsewhere. I hope it is possible for community based software
projects to exist and to defend against bullying or misrepresentation
without incorporating in various markets/territories.

/pippin


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