Small OSS Library Project Battles US Corporation 118
New submitter abesottedphoenix writes "The rural library responsible for the first open source library catalogue is under attack from defence contractor PTFS. More than a decade after rolling out Koha (which we've discussed in the past), they now find themselves in a battle to keep a generic Maori term within the public domain. The story is also covered at Radio NZ. "
thank you, summary makes no sense (Score:3, Interesting)
ok. usually i can understand /. summary immediately. sometimes i have to read the article. sometimes i have to do some extra research.
but this summary just does it - it makes so much "no sense" that i have no fucking idea what is it about and i'm just going to skip the topic.
Re:Mori? (Score:5, Interesting)
There may well be Maoris on Slashdot. You can't see tattoos over the Internet. Now, there are probably no Moa on Slashdot and I hope there are no Keas (they're terrorists, I tell you!), but that's ok, there are enough bird-brains as it is. I have great respect for the Maori and it is intensely sad that I lost all of my mementos from my year in New Zealand after a storage place fire.
Back to the issue at hand. It is completely reprehensible that a "common word" (because it IS a common word in New Zealand) can be trademarked at all. That is not acceptable, in and of itself. It is a flagrant abuse of the system, relying on the fact that Americans are not very up on foreign cultures. I am increasingly of the opinion that words should not be trademarkable at all. A "trademark" is, after all, first and foremost a mark. From the Sumerians to the Victorian English, this has been a stamp, a unique symbol that denotes the origin and guarantees authenticity. Arguably, the seals produced by stamps and signet rings serve the same function.
You can always make a new symbol. Creativity is endless. But you can't create a new language every time foreigners decide to trademark words from it.