Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
Arthur Heymans
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 3:48 PM Arthur Heymans arthur@aheymans.xyz wrote:
Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
I am not sure if I understood you correctly.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
Or is it something else? Then... *confused noises*
Arthur Heymans _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Best regards, Angel
Hi
Thanks for the reply.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the
project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Language is not a set in stone thing. There are default grammatical rules on how to write things and sometimes it is worth it to override the rules as I explained. It's basically a trade-off. There is no right and wrong here, except maybe from a trademark perspective, which most people are unaware of. Later I make the case that even from a trademark perspective I don't think it matters. I'm making the case that enforcing to write "coreboot" lowercase has more downsides than upsides, which is why I propose to allow "Coreboot" at the start of a sentence. Personally I think educating people about a trademark thing is superfluous work. Also in my personal communication it's a conundrum. For instance if I write a blog post I don't want to look like I'm making silly grammatical mistakes to those that haven't looked into the trademark registry (which almost no one does). At the same time I don't want to explain the trademark either as I think it blunts communicative efficiency.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot"
spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
So currently the only reason lowercase coreboot is enforced is because that's how the trademark was obtained. I'm using the argument that trademark interpretation is typically broad and allows for using an uppercase letter at the start of a sentence since that's what grammatical rules want. So I think "Coreboot" is very much covered by the "coreboot" trademark.
Arthur Heymans
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 7:19 PM Angel Pons th3fanbus@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 3:48 PM Arthur Heymans arthur@aheymans.xyz wrote:
Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would
dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like
"eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know
about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a
sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are
registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement?
I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
I am not sure if I understood you correctly.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
Or is it something else? Then... *confused noises*
Arthur Heymans _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Best regards, Angel
AFAIK the project name has been all lowercase from the start, and I don't see a compelling reason here to change it. To my eyes, it looks strange/wrong when started with a capital C.
Phoronix et all can continue being wrong =D
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024, 12:53 PM Arthur Heymans arthur@aheymans.xyz wrote:
Hi
Thanks for the reply.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the
project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Language is not a set in stone thing. There are default grammatical rules on how to write things and sometimes it is worth it to override the rules as I explained. It's basically a trade-off. There is no right and wrong here, except maybe from a trademark perspective, which most people are unaware of. Later I make the case that even from a trademark perspective I don't think it matters. I'm making the case that enforcing to write "coreboot" lowercase has more downsides than upsides, which is why I propose to allow "Coreboot" at the start of a sentence. Personally I think educating people about a trademark thing is superfluous work. Also in my personal communication it's a conundrum. For instance if I write a blog post I don't want to look like I'm making silly grammatical mistakes to those that haven't looked into the trademark registry (which almost no one does). At the same time I don't want to explain the trademark either as I think it blunts communicative efficiency.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot"
spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
So currently the only reason lowercase coreboot is enforced is because that's how the trademark was obtained. I'm using the argument that trademark interpretation is typically broad and allows for using an uppercase letter at the start of a sentence since that's what grammatical rules want. So I think "Coreboot" is very much covered by the "coreboot" trademark.
Arthur Heymans
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 7:19 PM Angel Pons th3fanbus@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 3:48 PM Arthur Heymans arthur@aheymans.xyz wrote:
Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would
dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products
like "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people
know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a
sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are
registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement?
I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
I am not sure if I understood you correctly.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot" spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
Or is it something else? Then... *confused noises*
Arthur Heymans _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Best regards, Angel
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 10:46 AM Arthur Heymans arthur@aheymans.xyz wrote:
Hi
Thanks for the reply.
Are you proposing to give up trying to defend the spelling of the
project's name because too many people write it wrong and educating them is too much effort? If so, I think this is a self-defeating attitude and I completely disagree with it.
Language is not a set in stone thing. There are default grammatical rules on how to write things and sometimes it is worth it to override the rules as I explained. It's basically a trade-off. There is no right and wrong here, except maybe from a trademark perspective, which most people are unaware of. Later I make the case that even from a trademark perspective I don't think it matters. I'm making the case that enforcing to write "coreboot" lowercase has more downsides than upsides, which is why I propose to allow "Coreboot" at the start of a sentence. Personally I think educating people about a trademark thing is superfluous work. Also in my personal communication it's a conundrum. For instance if I write a blog post I don't want to look like I'm making silly grammatical mistakes to those that haven't looked into the trademark registry (which almost no one does). At the same time I don't want to explain the trademark either as I think it blunts communicative efficiency.
Or is it that the trademark only covers the all-lowercase "coreboot"
spelling, so one can use a name like "CoReboot" (e.g. for something unrelated) without infringing the "coreboot" trademark? In that case, making the trademark case-insensitive makes sense.
So currently the only reason lowercase coreboot is enforced is because that's how the trademark was obtained. I'm using the argument that trademark interpretation is typically broad and allows for using an uppercase letter at the start of a sentence since that's what grammatical rules want. So I think "Coreboot" is very much covered by the "coreboot" trademark.
This matches my understanding that trademarks cover variations of font, size, color, and combinations of upper/lowercase lettering. No need to be overly pedantic about writing "coreboot" versus "Coreboot" etc. so long as the project is not misrepresented. If a company tries to sell a product called "CoReBoOt" or something then we'll C&D them.
We should probably use `coreboot` in areas internal to coreboot, such as our documentation, but I wouldn't ding people for using `Coreboot` in casual contexts such as forums, commit messages, etc.
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 12:42 PM David Hendricks david.hendricks@gmail.com wrote:
[...]but I wouldn't ding people for using `Coreboot` in casual contexts such as forums, commit messages, etc.
To clarify, I meant that writing `Coreboot` is not a concern from a trademark standpoint (AFAIK) and can make sense in some contexts as Arthur pointed out, such as conformance with well-understood language rules. Otherwise, `coreboot` should generally be written as `coreboot` for consistency across our documentation, codebase, etc.
coreboot / Coreboot is certainly not high on the list of things that keep me awake at night :-)
I think the world is sensitized to case not mattering that much. COREBOOT.org and coreboot.org go to the same place; so do amd.com and AMD.COM
ron / Ron
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 1:13 PM David Hendricks david.hendricks@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 12:42 PM David Hendricks david.hendricks@gmail.com wrote:
[...]but I wouldn't ding people for using `Coreboot` in casual contexts such as forums, commit messages, etc.
To clarify, I meant that writing `Coreboot` is not a concern from a trademark standpoint (AFAIK) and can make sense in some contexts as Arthur pointed out, such as conformance with well-understood language rules. Otherwise, `coreboot` should generally be written as `coreboot` for consistency across our documentation, codebase, etc. _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Hi,
not sure if it matters, but as a data point: I'm a coreboot user since about 8 years, I didn't know about the trademark being all-lowercase, and "Coreboot" at the start of a sentence definitively seems more harmonious to me.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
Another reason is perhaps that "coreboot" is just very easy to pronounce and "seems like a proper word" instead of e.g. "itunes", if it were all-lowercase.
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
Is this enforcement only for commits? IMO inconsistent commit messages (re: capitalizing "coreboot") are not a huge deal and the point that it creates unnecessary additional work to educate people about it seems valid.
But what if people contribute to documentatiion? IMO it would be nice to have it consistent there, i.e. no mix of "coreboot" and "Coreboot", which likely seems unprofessional to more people than beginning a sentence with "coreboot" does.
Merlin
On Thu, 4 Jul 2024 17:47:14 +0200, Arthur Heymans wrote:
Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
Arthur Heymans
Hey Arthur, I don't know that enforcing lowercase coreboot in the codebase really has anything to do with the trademark. It was decided a long time ago, before I joined the project, that coreboot was going to be lowercase all the time. We can of course change this decision if desired, but if we're sticking with that decision, it makes sense to try to enforce it in the places that matter most, the codebase, commit messages, and documentation.
If it's really such a burden to spell it in lowercase in commit messages that we need to get rid of the check, then let's just change the decision about always using lowercase spelling.
Martin
Jul 4, 2024 at 09:47 by arthur@aheymans.xyz:
Hi
The coreboot trademark is registered as lowercase. We enforce this in for instance commits, even when normal grammar would dictate uppercase at the start of a sentence.
This makes sense for very well known brands, companies and products like "eBay", "iPhone", "AMD". They are all very well known trademarks and they have some uppercase letter in them in atypical places. For these words grammar exceptions seems reasonable.
Coreboot is a reasonably well known as a project, but little people know about the specificity of the trademark. This often causes confusion on people either reading "coreboot" at the start of a sense, where it looks grammatically wrong, making it even look unprofessional in the eyes of some. This is because there is no other uppercase letter inside coreboot that would make it a typical exception to regular grammar rules.
People getting into the project making the mistake at the start of a sentence, might get the wrong impression of too many idiosyncrasies. On top of that it takes a non zero amount of effort on people in the project to educate others on this trademark thing.
Also trademark are typically a bit more broad than exactly how they are registered. I cannot start a company called iNTel or aMD that makes chips. I cannot put a product on the market called "IPHoNE". I think the same applies to "coreboot".
So my question is: can we relax the trademark in lowercase enforcement? I would suggest to simply allow both ways.
Arthur Heymans
-
Angel Pons -
Arthur Heymans -
David Hendricks -
Martin Roth -
Matt DeVillier -
Merlin Büge -
ron minnich