Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark

Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark(gist.github.com)

69 points by voidfiles 12 years ago | 21 comments

latj 12 years ago |

I pledge not to use nodejitsu or have any dealings with nodejitsu employees until I see a blog post stating that they have changed their minds and are not going to hijack npm trademark.

PlNG 12 years ago | |

I pledge not to use nodejitsu or have any dealings with nodejitsu employees.

There's nothing to stop them from saying "sorry", and equally nothing to stop them from doing it again. It should not have happened in the first place.

coenhyde 12 years ago |

Issacs wrote the initial npm and was by far the largest contributor.

https://github.com/npm/npm/graphs/contributors

spikels 12 years ago | |

According to Mikeal he "wrote the original version of the npm registry". More of his thoughts on the history of NPM here:

https://gist.github.com/mikeal/8947417

mikealAgain 12 years ago | | |

the registry, yes, not npm itself. isaacs also has committed more to the actual registry code than I have as well.

rlidwka 12 years ago |

I wonder how it relates to a few npm forks (https://github.com/rlidwka/yapm, https://github.com/visionmedia/npm) created earlier this year, especially to second one since @visionmedia didn't change its name...

And what about alternate npm-compatible registries (https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie, https://github.com/rlidwka/sinopia, https://github.com/cnpm/cnpmjs.org), not based on CouchDB?

"npm" isn't only a product name anymore since it's used extremely widely, so this doesn't seem like a good thing to do.

ender7 12 years ago | |

In the trademark world you are arguing that "npm" has become "genericized" [1]. That certainly can happen, but that would be a very hard argument to make given npm's relative youth and the lack of true use as a generic. The people you link are either forking the actual npm client (in which case they are referring to it as a proper noun), or are building their own repo architecture, in which case they refer to it as an "npm registry" or "npm repository", not just "an npm".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

rlidwka 12 years ago | | |

As far as I remember, "npm registry" is a trademark as well. Isn't it? At least, that's what is written here: https://github.com/npm/npm#legal-stuff .

My point is: any single package README contains a phrase "install me using `npm install whatever`". It feels like it is generalized already...

malandrew 12 years ago | |

Even without a trademark, the npm source has been Artistic License v2 for as long as I can remember, so any forks are obligated to change their name to have the right to forking the source code.

petercooper 12 years ago |

Had to go 4 pages back in HN to find this. Guess this story is getting flagged by someone.

imdsm 12 years ago | |

I saw it via Node Weekly. Wondered why I didn't see it on HN. Go to post the links, already posted. Strange!

troymc 12 years ago |

It's my understanding that in open source communities, the relevant trademarks are usually held by a community-led foundation (e.g. the Apache Software Foundation, the Python Software Foundation). Is there no "Node Foundation"?

rlidwka 12 years ago | |

There is no node foundation, "Node.js" is a Joyent's trademark. We had discussed this particular bikeshed in the mailing list last year. :)

Oculus 12 years ago | |

Unfortunately, I think this is the one big issue barring Node from wide adoption. I love Node.js and the surrounding ecosystem, but all these companies fighting one another can't possibly be good for the community.

camus2 12 years ago | |

no,there is basically nodejitsu,strongloop and joyent but no Foundation. NodeJs is managed by private businesses which purpose are only to care about the interest of their shareholders, not nodejs or opensource on the node community. I guess NodeJS will be more like Nginx than Python in the way it will be managed. IE a free version + some premium services/packages... I would not rely too much on npm in the future though.

joeevans1000 12 years ago |

Well. This is the week I started really getting into node. It's also the week I found about this. It's all disheartening. It's probably a necessary awakening step for developers in regards to truly considering the ownership of their tools.

I hope the npm replacement word is going to be as easy and short, or even more so. nnn? "nnn is not npm"?

btd 12 years ago | |

Maybe just n3?

PS: It is weird that node.js community well known for internal battles. Everybody throw shit at each other and nobody win from this.

aioprisan 12 years ago |

Why hadn't nodejitsu trademarked npm beforehand, if they believed the owned the right to it?

camus2 12 years ago |

so who owns npm?

cevn 12 years ago | |

Well, before Jason Smith started to try to monetize npm, I would have said nobody. It's open source, right?

After, well, he's the first one to do it, and it's not as though anyone else was in that space. So to me he has a better claim than Nodejitsu.

It's possible that my knowledge is incomplete though so if anyone knows better please correct my misconceptions.

I can't really see Nodejitsu's claim here. Also, why didn't nodejitsu voice their reservations over his use of npm before Jason decided to monetize the project? I feel as though either we don't know the whole story or Nodejitsu is pulling a fast one on the community.

the_mitsuhiko 12 years ago | | |

> Well, before Jason Smith started to try to monetize npm, I would have said nobody. It's open source, right?

That's not what open source man. There are still copyright notices in open source code.