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:

1. It wasn’t me, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything.
2. Although I did actually know about it four months ago.
3. 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.
4. Again, I did actually know about it, but it wasn’t me/us, nobody saw me/us do it, you can’t prove anything.
5. 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.
6. 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…
7. Blah, blah blah blah, buzzword, blah, namedrop, blah blah, further deflection to innocent OSS project, blah.
8. It’s ours, but it’s yours, it’s ours, but it’s yours, it’s ours, but it’s yours.
9. 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:

1. It wasn’t just us, but yes, we screwed up.
2. We’re really sorry.
3. We’ll drop the trademark immediately.
4. Disregard all previous communications.
5. 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.)