I’m afraid I won’t be one of the commentors brown-nosing O’Reilly for his response to the Web 2.0 debacle. His point-by-point response is contradictory and disingenuous imho. Here’s how it should have read:
- It wasn’t me, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything.
- Although I did actually know about it four months ago.
- Look, all these other people have trademarks. They’re specific marks for actual things they have a genuine right to, but that’s not important.
- Again, I did actually know about it, but it wasn’t me/us, nobody saw me/us do it, you can’t prove anything.
- We’re sowwy we scared oo Tom (big wuss). But the law says we have to protect our/their marks, even if they’re generic phrases we/they have no right to.
- We/they don’t really want the “Web 2.0” mark at all! We/they only want it as it applies to conferences! That’s why we/they threatened you with our/their “Web 2.0 Conferences” mark. Didn’t we/they? Umm…
- Blah, blah blah blah, buzzword, blah, namedrop, blah blah, further deflection to innocent OSS project, blah.
- It’s ours, but it’s yours, it’s ours, but it’s yours, it’s ours, but it’s yours.
- It wasn’t me/us, nobody saw me/them do it, you can’t prove anything.
When he could have just said this, in which case I’d have a shedload more respect for him:
- It wasn’t just us, but yes, we screwed up.
- We’re really sorry.
- We’ll drop the trademark immediately.
- Disregard all previous communications.
- Congrats on the babs Tom!
It doesn’t matter a damn in the end, it was a storm in a teacup, I just hate to see this kind of guff going on. People like O’Reilly should know better.
(Thanks Bernie.)