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2026-09-10.log
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<old>I wonder if they can trademark the name and what are the implications for us <old>this is obviously a AI slop business, but I do wonder <ieure>dsmith, Looks nice, dislike the LLM policy. <ArneBab_>sneek: later tell ekaitz: I also think nlnet would reject LLM generated works. That the copyright state isn’t clear should be enough for that. My note was about *also* keeping away from LLMs for the proposal. <ArneBab_>old: thank you for making it clear in the Mailing List, too, that LLM contributions are rejected. <ArneBab_>old: does GNU have a trademark for Guile? If not, it’s high time to get one. <dthompson>dsmith: fyi the author of that has made a lot of guile slop. idk if an llm generated this, too. <trannus_aran>dthompson: I wouldn't be surprised, based on that logo and the meaning/words ratio of that readme <sneek>trannus_aran, you have 1 message! <loon>it should be "easy" (insofar as anything in the legal system is easy) to fight a trademark with the prior art argument <lechner>Hi, prior art relates to patents. Guile has a common law trademark that would be strengthened with a registration, but it is a trademark without. <loon>ah, thank you for the correction :) <lechner>loon: Sorry I was so curt. I have a crying three-year old on my lap. <loon>lechner: you did not seem curt at all, simply matter-of-fact :) <lechner>Given the concern here recently, it may be a wothwhile to add trademark claims to Guile's website. Guile would likely benefit from having been in continuous use, from what I can tell, for thirty years or so. If the mark is actually "GNU Guile' it may be necessary to coordinate with GNU, which is a registered mark. <lechner>loon: I sometimes come across as rude (and have to read a kid's book here in a moment) but I was Debian's trademark delegate for five years. I have no legal training, and giving legal advice without it is a felony where I live. <JohnCowan>lechner: I always write "I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice nor the unauthorized practice of law", which passed muster with Larry Rosen <lechner>JohnCowan: Then you are both better informed and better connected! I've found the attention to trademarks in open source projects highly selective, political and often irrational. <lechner>I also know almost no open source lawyers <lechner>and the ones I do know tend to sue each other <JohnCowan>well, I only know one and we haven't spoken in years <lechner>Looks like a nice guy, but OSI is a weird place in my opinion <lechner>You should reconnect. Maybe he can help. Guile is worth it, having withstood the tests of time <JohnCowan>if i ask him that he pretty much has to charge <lechner>Yeah, I am not even sure there is a real problem at this point. <lechner>But of course I can't speak for the developers who presumably own the mark. <JohnCowan>Legal advice is saying what someone (other than yourself) *should do* based on their specific fact situation. Just saying what the law is, or even what the law is in a hypothetical case, is not legal advice. (IANAL, TINLA) <lechner>Totally agree, although in the world of open source it's sometimes helpful to suggest something while saying that I am an idiot. <lechner>Programmers are obsessed with legal discussions. <lechner>Also, the collective nature of most open source projects makes it very difficult to tell when someone is giving advice or reminiscing about their own hopeless situation. For example, I believe it would be totally cool for wingo to make legal statement here. <lechner>Just like I can claim that I can't be cited for stopping my car in someone's driveway (which may or may not be untrue in California) <lechner>At the end of the day, I don't see anyone picking up the banner to exclude that Indian company, or whatever they are, from the global marketplace. <hwpplayer1>lechner hello what do you mean by legal discussions ? Licensing ? <lechner>Anything. Copyrights in LLMs seem to be a favorite these days. <lechner>hwpplayer1: Why do you care about licensing, and what are your positions? (Channel operstors, please speak up if this discussion veers to far from the stated channel topic.) <hwpplayer1>My question, if I write a "framework" for a shell like bash , powershell with guile and call it like qshell and invoke as the standard shell rather than bash and others how can I do that ? <lechner>Would you please rephrase that? Having fallen in love with Guile, I don't even write shell scripts anymore. <hwpplayer1>thanks first of all, I want to write a shell like bash or pwsh, with guile language <hwpplayer1>like a shell implemented in c language but now with guile <lechner>You like shells (as opposed to REPLs)? <old>I think we could reach out to the FSF for legal questions wrt to trademark <sham1>Someone could have told them about scsh <lechner>old: From my experience, it's not the hottest topic, plus there is a lot of misinformation as to what a trademark does and doesn't. <lechner>The primary purpose is to reduce consumer confusion. Do you think people flock to that website even though they want to find the Scheme interpreter? Does the other site benefit unfarly from GNU Guile's reputation? What are the damages in terms of lost sales or in branding power, or whatever. <lechner>And again, I have no legal training. All this comes from the website of the USPTO. Please consult a lawyer right away if you feel that GNU Guile is suffering a harm. <lechner>sham1: Okay, maybe I misinterpreted. I thought they were looking for Gnash, but I didn't make that connection, either. <lechner>sneek: later tell hwppplayer1: Are you looking to rewrite Scsh, or perhaps Gnash? <JohnCowan> note that Chicken now implements scsh-process and awk <JohnCowan>so in essence scsh is already disentangled from scheme48