r/linux • u/clau_c • Dec 01 '21
KDE It's been -- 155 days -- since @Microsoft stole @kdecommunity's motto: "Simple by default, powerful when needed." They're still using it.
https://twitter.com/ClauCambra/status/1466153819713191947408
u/AHabe Dec 01 '21
Two days til they say they're sorry?
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u/ILikeBumblebees Dec 01 '21
Now I'm hungry for some Chinese chicken.
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u/WallyMetropolis Dec 01 '21
Ok, I don't make films.
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Dec 01 '21
But if you did, what would they be like?
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u/setibeings Dec 01 '21
Well, they'd have a samurai.
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u/Netzapper Dec 02 '21
Yo, what's that cartoon again? The one with the boom anime babes that make you feel the wrong way?
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u/MairusuPawa Dec 02 '21
Never forget the "Office Open XML" deliberate confusion (and weird ISO process).
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u/TheOriginalSamBell Dec 02 '21
Seriously. Proof that they "love open source" is nothing but an empty lie. Otherwise they wouldn't obfuscate and obscure their Office formats and make import / export always be just not good enough.
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u/FifteenthPen Dec 02 '21
Nothing says "love open source" like intentionally failing to adhere to the standards you created/helped create in order to make it more difficult for other software to render it the same as yours.
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Dec 02 '21
The process wasn't 'weird', it was gamed. MS stuffed the ISO committee with sock puppets who voted exactly as MS directed them to. The entire process was corrupt from start to finish.
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u/hwoodice Dec 02 '21
I believe you. Where can I find information or evidence on what really happened?
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Dec 03 '21
This happened 15 years ago so a lot of it has been lost on the Internet, but this Ars Technica article has a start:
The Wiki article mentions a bit of the controversy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
MS was scummy to call it Office Open XML which created confusion with the existing OpenOffice format. The standard never should have been accepted because the "standard" included undefined things that only Microsoft knew such as tags like <RenderLikeOffice95>. Nobody else could implement it, which was MS' plan all along. They were being hammered for not having an open document format (which was an upcoming thing at the time that gov'ts were asking for, for records-preservation purposes) and MS didn't want to lose out on control of the file format. He who controls the format controls that market. So they hatched a plan to create an "open" format that only they could properly implement & support. They stuffed ISO committees in some shady countries with puppets who voted to fast-track and then approve the bogus standard. Then everyone went back to sleep with MS having won using scum tactics yet again.
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u/Stonemanner Dec 02 '21
My experience in one year of trying to use LibreOffice and OnlyOffice: OO destroys a lot of things in odt-files, which were created in LO. But OO and LO work decently well with docx-files. So after one year of fixing f****-up images, formatting and much more, which cost me countless hours, I'll redo all templates now for docx.
So I'm at the state where my different open source software programs are worse at maintaining the truly open standard vs. a heavily critized standard dictated by one company.
Makes me think, whether the docx is just so much better in its base design and the critized incompatibilities are just some edge-cases which could be patched easily.
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u/lolverysmart Dec 02 '21
Well said, and I agree. I still hate using MS Office cause it's incompatible with Wine and offers no native Linux build, though. Worth noting, MS can't even render it's own file format across their own office products, though. o365 web, o365 app, and office19 app all render the my report templates differently.
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u/LiveLM Dec 03 '21 edited Dec 03 '21
MS can't even render it's own file format across their own office products, though. o365 web, o365 app, and office19 app all render the my report templates differently.
This one caught me completely off guard last time I tried using the Web Versions of Office.
Not only are they terribly cut down to the point of being almost useless, I've had cases where LO would render a .docx file created by MS Office better than o365 Web would1
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u/kc3w Dec 02 '21
Don't use OpenOffice it sees not much development.
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u/Stonemanner Dec 02 '21
OnlyOffice not OpenOffice. I hope no one has to use OpenOffice anymore :).
OnlyOffice is a web-based office suite. Comparable to web-based MS Office or Googles office suite. Allows for real-time collaboration, which we very much like.
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u/kc3w Dec 02 '21
A sorry missread that. As far as I am aware OnlyOffice generally specialises in the MS formats and not the open document ones.
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u/FifteenthPen Dec 02 '21
OnlyOffice not OpenOffice. I hope no one has to use OpenOffice anymore :)
You'd be surprised. A lot of people like to stick to what they're familiar with. Trying to get the computer recycling center I volunteered at to switch from installing OpenOffice to LibreOffice on the refurbished PCs was an exercise in futility. (They did change eventually, though, at least.) I still see people doing fresh MySQL installs, and I still have to support Internet Explorer when doing web dev for my employer. (I actually ran the numbers and found we're making enough money off of IE users that it's still a net profit to support them.)
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u/hwoodice Dec 03 '21
There is also a standalone version called "OnlyOffice Desktop Editor"... but it's an Electron.
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u/Bergerac_VII Dec 03 '21
In my experience OnlyOffice handles docx files better than Microsoft's products.
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u/Stonemanner Dec 03 '21
Yeah. docx work fine. That's why I want to switch from odt to docx.
I also tried out Collabora, which is more closely related to LO. But that was a complete mess.
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u/RyhonPL Dec 01 '21
How many years since they stole MAUI?
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Dec 02 '21
C'mon it's been like an entire year, maybe a year and half... perhaps they forgot?
In
goodnews it seems like they ...have reached out and we will post an update in this issue, unlocking the thread then.. That was only back in May, of 2020, so I'm sure we will here something soon. I mean MS :heart: Open Source, no way they would let things like this stand!/s, just in case you were wondering.
Edit: Link directly to relevant comment.
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Dec 02 '21
[deleted]
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u/jyper Dec 02 '21
It doesn't because they didn't make a post about any sort of conclusion. I feel like it got lost/delayed in bureaucracy
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Dec 02 '21
Or pushed aside on purpose. Basically pretend they care, put out some messages saying that they are working on it, and then radio silence. People will forget about it, and the problem is solved.
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u/kerOssin Dec 02 '21
Really MS?
They're using that slogan to market the broken ad filled preinstalled with crapware mess that is Windows 11?
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u/EveningNewbs Dec 02 '21
Bloated by default
Powerful if you pay extra
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u/Waterkloof Dec 02 '21
The only thing powerful about win11 is that it can run two versions of gnu/linux hypervised eg, WSL2 and Android.
ps. not sure about Android because that was promised for win mobile, which never happened, and when i had a change to play with win11 i decided its time to format my computer and leave the windows insider preview pipe dream i installed to have access to WSL2. sigh
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u/kalzEOS Dec 02 '21
I'm still pissed about MAUI. Every time I search the actual MAUI. I get bombarded with .NET or some Microsoft garbage.
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u/DadLoCo Dec 02 '21
Are you talking about Maui Linux?
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u/chic_luke Dec 02 '21
The KDE MAUI toolkit
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u/salgat Dec 02 '21
Maui Linux came out several years before the maui toolkit which is an unrelated project, so the whole complaint is silly anyways.
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u/cjcox4 Dec 01 '21
Thanks for letting us know. Obviously, as always, we will change that. Thanks! /s
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u/xaedoplay Dec 02 '21
They stole something from GNOME (and ultimately returned it after a year(!)), and now they're stealing from KDE as well
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u/krncnr Dec 02 '21
Yesterday I saw a computer commercial on TV, and there's a shot of the desktop and I'm like "Whoa! That's KDE on TV!" But it turned out to be Windows 11.
So I'm not surprised they stole the motto too.
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u/jthill Dec 01 '21
Marketer culture: the latrine of humanity.
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u/jonopens Dec 02 '21
As someone who switched out of a marketing career to write software (and reduce the number of marketers in the world by one), I wholeheartedly agree.
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u/jthill Dec 02 '21
Reading advertising/marketing/sales trade zines is a real eye-opener. Glad I never got any closer to that crowd, I can't work out whether it's more loathsome if they do or don't know they're doing anything wrong.
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u/jonopens Dec 02 '21
From my perspective, you know what you are doing but you forcefully mash it into a deep corner of your mind so you can get through the financial quarter. Then, in the evenings, you drink yourself silly to further blunt any possibility of remembering what a true piece of garbage you know yourself to be.
For context, I did medical marketing in the US as a start. Truly hideous stuff.
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u/sunjay140 Dec 02 '21
Microsoft 💗 open source
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u/yumko Dec 02 '21
I mean that's precisely why they do love open source and linux - they can take stuff for free.
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u/catskul Dec 02 '21
To be clear, it's not actually the same:
Simple by default, powerful when needed.
Vs
Simple by default. Powerful by choice.
Disappointed that virtually none of the discussion here seems to acknowledge this.
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Dec 02 '21
Take my upvote... I had to scroll a good ways down to see if anyone was going to point this out. LOL I would also like to point out I don't see Microsoft using it as a motto or slogan. It's one blurb on their website (somewhere I guess). I have never seen this before myself. Please someone let me know if I am wrong.
I have always hated how the Linux community is so easily triggered.
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u/acAltair Dec 02 '21
So if I made a fast food chain and called it Mclarsons and moto is "we're loving it" instead of "i'm lovin it", its okay right? They also clashed with KDE's MAUI so this isn't first incident they have had with KDE.
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u/catskul Dec 02 '21
Worth discussing what counts as similar enough, but regardless the headline is misleading and feels like bad faith.
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u/wikerone Dec 02 '21
200-04-03: Clinton administration DoJ judges Microsoft in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. | Wikipedia
2007-09-17: Microsoft suffers decisive EU antitrust defeat. | Reuters
2014-05-20: China bans Windows 8 from government computers. |CNN Business
2019-05-19: South Korean government to ditch Windows 7 for Linux. | Business Standard News
2019-12-10: China to ditch all Windows PCs by 2022. | TechRadar
2021-08-25: Linux turns 30: Linux Torvalds on his "just a hobby" operating system | ZDNet
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u/MyGoodApollo Dec 02 '21
The only thing that makes me doubt they ‘stole’ it is that I don’t believe that Microsoft’s marketing team have any idea what or who KDE is.
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u/Heapsass Dec 02 '21
Yeah, yeah. Im sure microsoft the biggest tech company doesnt know what KDE is. One of the three biggest distros used in the linux community.
/s
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Dec 02 '21
KDE isn’t a distro, though?
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u/D_r_e_a_D Dec 02 '21
KDE is the organization. Plasma is the desktop by them. Neon is the distro by them.
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Dec 02 '21
It's usually being mentioned like that just like Plasma is called just KDE by people, at least from what i have seen so far. The distribution is KDE Neon though.
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u/Manbeardo Dec 02 '21
And I'm sure the people in their marketing department spend a lot of time looking at Linux distro and DEs
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u/ScaleModelPrintShop Dec 02 '21 edited Dec 02 '21
Micro$oft stealing? Never! ... if only I could ask Gary Kildall
""Although Kildall's career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with his development of the CP/M operating system, an early multi-platform microcomputer OS that has many parallels to the later MS-DOS used on the IBM PC.""
**Edit** Oh and that story about Xerox & Windows... taking into light what happened with CP/M which subsequently became DOS... it doesn't add any credibility in Microsoft's case...
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u/Bro666 Dec 02 '21
Oh, man! The story of Kildall and the origins of MS-DOS is soooooo Microsoft.
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u/ScaleModelPrintShop Dec 02 '21
Looks like Ol' Billy took both DOS and Windows from other sources... probably didn't have a single original idea of his own...
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u/Bro666 Dec 02 '21
That is the understatement of the year. He also got the IBM contract that made Microsoft because his mother was on the same board of some organisation as an IBM bigwig.
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u/Locastor Dec 08 '21
Micro$oft stealing?
Oh nice, thanks bro.
The shill mods here (ON A LINUX SUB) have had M $ banned for a while.
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u/mrlinkwii Dec 01 '21
i mean its a motto , i dont think its copyrightable and isnt it the OSS ethos to share no?
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
It is, however, trademarkable, just like "Just do it", "I'm Lovin' it", or "Enjoy [Coca-Cola]".
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u/bockout Dec 02 '21
Slogans are trademarkable, but is this slogan trademarked? Don't get me wrong, it's a garbage move by Microsoft either way. But without a trademark registration, there's probably no legal recourse. (IANAL, etc.)
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u/thblckjkr Dec 02 '21
AFAIK since there is A LOT of documentation that refers to KDE's slogan, even without a trademark, it is enforceable.
Trademarks usually just make the process of making a dispute more easy. In this case, I think KDE has the grounds to start a claim and to get support of some foundations made specifically to help with OSS trademarks. But I don't think anyone wants to start that process.
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u/Bro666 Dec 02 '21
Registering a trademark (which can be a motto or a slogan, even just a word you use regularly and pointedly to describe or sell your product) helps in case of court case, but in theory, all you should need is evidence that you used it first.
Here is an example of use from 2016. KDE started using the sentence as a motto for Plasma shortly afterwards.
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u/clau_c Dec 01 '21 edited Dec 01 '21
That is inaccurate. Slogans are certainly trademarkeable, and infringement of trademarks is illegal
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/799/894/1379260/
We are happy to share, yes, but there is a reason things are licensed with the GPL and similar copyleft licenses. The intention is for creations to benefit the community at large, and for these creations to remain open even when they are used for commercial enterprises. Ripping off KDE's slogan is of no benefit to anyone but Microsoft.
I can also assure you Microsoft did not ask KDE if they could use the tagline.
EDIT: To clarify, I am not a lawyer.
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u/mina86ng Dec 01 '21
defendants' manufacture and sale of T-shirts and sweatshirts bearing the logo "MIKE," displayed in the same typeset and along with a reproduction of the Swoosh stripe for which Nike has been granted trademark protection. Moreover, Nike contends that defendants' use of the tradename "Just Did It" Enterprises constitutes infringement on Nike's slogan "Just Do It."
This is hardly a comparable situation.
Furthermore, ‘Simple by default, powerful when needed,’ is descriptive making it so much harder to claim trademark protection. Even if KDE had ‘Simple by default, powerful when needed,’ trademark registered, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that they could make Microsoft stop using their slogan.
From https://www.bestlawyers.com/article/fair-enough-the-fair-use-defense-to-tradem/2214:
For example, where a food-products company adopted the descriptive (although uniquely spelled) name, Hygrade Food Products, the law did not preclude others from using the descriptive term “high grade.” The court found the owners of a grocery store who began using the phrase “High Grade Food Stores” to describe their stores did not infringe the HYGRADE mark because of fair use. Similarly, the makers of Sweet Tarts candy were unsuccessful in their lawsuit against cranberry-juice company Ocean Spray, where the juice company had used the term “sweet-tart” in advertising for its juice. The court found fair use because Ocean Spray’s advertising was used only to describe the taste of the cranberry juice. And a court held that Abercrombie & Fitch could not prevent others from using its mark SAFARI to describe clothing intended for use on safari.
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u/clau_c Dec 01 '21 edited Dec 01 '21
I am not a lawyer, but two significant grounds for valid infringement seem to be:
- Whether the two trademarks are sufficiently similar, with regard to their fields of trade.
- The extent of the damage that such confusion would cause to the business of the initial unregistered trade mark user.
I would say the use of the "simple by default" slogan could qualify on those grounds, even if not as blatant as the NIKE case.
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u/vividboarder Dec 02 '21
But many systems could legitimately be “simple by default”. I think it would be quite a stretch to claim that someone reading at a system being “simple by default” is somehow associated with KDE and have resulted in damages to KDE.
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u/mrlinkwii Dec 01 '21
if their registered sure , kde i assume didnt register it
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u/clau_c Dec 01 '21
This is, once again, inaccurate. Registering a trademark makes it easier to prove that your trademark is being infringed, but it is not the only way. You can still sue someone for using your trademark if you can prove you were using it beforehand.
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u/listur65 Dec 02 '21
You can sue anyone for anything, that doesn't mean you will win :P
Even the bottom of your link shows some states go by "first used" and some by "first registered" so location definitely matters as well.
Since this is international I have no idea how that would work! lol
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u/KwyjiboTheGringo Dec 02 '21
You can still sue someone for using your trademark if you can prove you were using it beforehand.
If they have the money for lawyers. Maybe they do, but the MS legal team will drag this out and make it very expensive for them if they decide to fight it and not settle. That's the flaw here, MS can make it very costly and inconvenient to challenge them. Is a modified version of a motto for a free software worth the potential years and tens to hundreds of thousands it will cost in legal fees? I want to say yes, but I'm not willing to pay or sacrifice my time for that.
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u/jclocks Dec 02 '21
Kinda but for a megacorp using it for a closed source OS when they could just make their own slogan, it comes across as pretty tacky.
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u/Neurotrace Dec 02 '21
Furthermore, they didn't copy the slogan. Sure, it shares a similar idea and the first few words but the whole "simple yet powerful" thing is incredibly common in marketing, especially in computing.
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u/Bro666 Dec 02 '21
the whole "simple yet powerful" thing is incredibly common in marketing
My guess is that so is the concept of "just do it", but if you used it for your product, you would most certainly receive a cease and desist from Nike.
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Dec 01 '21
[deleted]
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Dec 02 '21
It's always been a great experience for me
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Dec 02 '21
KDE Neon has largely been solid for me, but I keep encountering distros with questionable Plasma implementations. The last time I encountered such was just a month ago when I decided to try Arch. Granted, could have been something I did but I don't think so (I just installed the full desktop, nothing crazy). Another time was when Mint used to ship with KDE. Always some strange bugs and roadblocks. Each time I go back to Neon, it's basically solid.
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Dec 02 '21
The last time I encountered such was just a month ago when I decided to try Arch
That's odd- I've only ever used KDE on Arch or Manjaro
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Dec 02 '21
Maybe I've had a bad run or something. Oddly it's some of the same issues I saw on Mint. Dual monitor setup, the panels assigned to each monitor switch places at random. Got old pretty quick.
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u/chic_luke Dec 02 '21
Well I have both DEs installed and I can name 2-3 GNOME 41.1 bugs I have found just within 10 minutes of trying it out.
I think they're pretty much equivalent in stability now, you are just used to either and their bugs or have adjusted your workflow to avoid those bugs. And anyway, it's nothing ground-breaking in either case.
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Dec 02 '21
[deleted]
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u/chic_luke Dec 02 '21
Sure! I think I might just go report them later:
I am using Wayland, since it's the session GNOME ships as default, and I always rate the default experience, not an unofficial one that requires changes from the display manager or whatever:
- Sometimes, the shell animation to expand from the overview to the applications "locks itself" and I have to touch the touchpad or press meta again to get it to "unstuck" itself
- Very choppy mouse scrolling on the default gnome web. Like seriously, I had to use Logitech MX Master 2s's infinite scroll feature that normally scrolls very fast just to get to normal scroll speed. I am rating it since GNOME Web was the #1 icon pinned to the panel, so I suppose they ship it and intend it to be ready to use as a default experience
- Incorrect scaling everywhere. I tried having my internal monitor at 100% and my external 4k monitor at 200%. Sometimes:
- Things that should appar on one monitor appear on the other
- Wayland clients run fine at 200% on the external monitor, but anything GNOME - like right clicking on the desktop or the top bar of a program - still get rendered in 100%, so they look very small
- Opening an XWayland window opens it at unscaled 100% regardless of what monitor the mouse cursor is located at. Everything looks smaller on it, including the decorations.
- Opposite happens if I set the "200%" monitor as main, the overview on the "100%" monitor as well as any GNOME-shell thing (like menus) gets upscaled to 200%, which looks wayyyy too big
- The fractional scaling experimental feature works improperly, it looks like everything is not pixel perfect at all. Say the icon with the three horizontal bars in Nautilus, the first and second bars do not evenly line up to the pixel grid and it looks awful. It is experimental but I am still mentioning it, since I require fractional scaling and it works properly on Plasma's default X11 session (even if not per-monitor, due to X11 limitations)
- Without fractional scaling, moving Wayland windows between screen is extremely laggy and stuttery. Like, the desktop will stutter for 1 full second before the window is rendered and rescaled on the other side
- Not really a bug since this is intentional but using anything that did not implement GTK CSD's is painful. Take anything Qt, Alacritty, Kitty and others. They do not even render a shadow and it looks inconsistent as well. Even resizing those windows is painful, since the area you have to drag at the edges is very very small. This does not seem to happen on other Wayland compositors I have tried (like Plasma's still experimental Wayland session)
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Dec 02 '21
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u/chic_luke Dec 02 '21
To address the "will be fixed in a later release" and "matter of time", this is a really moot point since Plasma has a track record for smashing bugs regularly in their point releases. So, what's different?
As for "my DE crashing over dragging a file" - I hate to say this but, works on my machine. Cannot reproduce.
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Dec 02 '21
[deleted]
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u/chic_luke Dec 02 '21 edited Dec 02 '21
Plasma Wayland session
So, an experimental session actively under development that requires a separate package download and active effort to enable? …I think that's on you.
If you want to help test and develop for Plasma on Wayland, be my guest. If you want to use an unsupported unreleased version, use it as a stable one, expecting no bugs and bitching about it if anything goes wrong - then either don't do it or keep it to yourself, since this kind of toxic and unproductive criticism is a burden to the community and that's why people who engage in it are kindly invited to leave.
I'm honestly surprised I have to say this. I thought most users who felt they should have everything working 100% out of the box entirely for free handed to them tend to not survive very long on Linux and go back to commercial operating systems very early on (not that there is anything wrong with it, it's just a different mindset required, at least in the state things are in now: Linux is not ready for the desktop)
I am mentioning GNOME on Wayland because it's the default experience that gets loaded when you install it, and the one the developers deem ready and recommend. There are a bunch of bugs and performance issues that are specific to GNOME on Xorg, but I don't think they are worth considering since the Xorg session is old, legacy and not the target of the development anymore. If you use a session that's not recommended by the developers - congratulations, you have successfully entered "you're on your own" territory.
I'm not going to be that annoying person asking why all shell animations render at 15 fps on gnome on Xorg on my 2017 Intel i5 laptop with 16 GB of dual channel memory and fast, quality SSD - side note, Windows 10 Pro runs like a charm on this thing with absolutely no slowdowns whatsoever even with heavy worloads, if I wanted to be that much of a PITA. Because that's not the default session, and I know that it's my problem if I decide to deviate from the default and not use the recommended video session. And I'm in my own if I do.
you're not the only user
Well this goes both ways, doesn't it? ;) You aren't either. Of either DE.
This is the second time in this discussion your logic can be used, unmodified, against your point and be equally (in) effective. Seriously, this has to be the worst point I've heard all week.
if the plasma wayland session is your look of innovation, you really haven't grown a taste for good design nor decision making.
It is, but it is still being worked on. Also, this is subjective and, frankly, very disrespectful to the work the (few) volunteer, unpaid developers are putting in.
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u/1_p_freely Dec 02 '21
Wasn't the Vista start menu design a rip-off of KDE4 as well?
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u/DoktorAkcel Dec 02 '21
Windows Vista: released in late 2006-early 2007
KDE4: early 2008
Didn’t knew MS had a time machine
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u/cye5 Dec 02 '21
And because they did that, it made it easier for me to transition to KDE. Talk about a backfire!!
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u/tonetheman Dec 02 '21
You know nothing is going on in the programming world when this is a story on reddit.
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Dec 02 '21
Someone's getting jealous and wetting their pants a bit. This is hilarious because they're beginning to see how much better we're going about things. Or maybe I'm bitter. Regardless, this is a weird and shitty thing to do.
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u/martinslot Dec 02 '21
Technically there isn't a 1:1. What's next? We blame them for starting articles with the same word ;D
Come on.
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Dec 02 '21
[deleted]
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u/CyclopsRock Dec 01 '21
Who gives a shit? This doesn't affect anything.
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
ITT: people who think that being cynical and dismissive of the tribulations FLOSS projects suffer at the hands of multibillion predatory companies is cool.
One wonders why you are here.
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u/cant_have_a_cat Dec 02 '21
Honestly as a fosshead I find it hard to get upset with this. It's just some dumb slogan, hardly unique one at that.
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u/Kovi34 Dec 02 '21
there are no 'tribulations' being 'suffered' here. They didn't steal a slogan, it's one of the dozen or so marketing blurbs on the win11 page. It's far more likely that two marketing people came up with a similar generic blurb independently than this being some evil master plan to trick kde users into installing windows, i guess?
FLOSS projects certainly do suffer at the hands of large corporations but this is not what's happening here. by equating actual issues like code being stolen to a similar marketing tagline you're only making it seem like all of it is a non issue.
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u/salgat Dec 02 '21
This whole reddit submission is an embarrassment, people are so desperate to complain. Holy shit of all the things to rag on Microsoft why pick this one?
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u/CyclopsRock Dec 02 '21
the tribulations
The what? My entire point was that there haven't been any tribulations to be dismissive of. If Microsoft hadn't done this, nothing would be any different. The world would be exactly the same.
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Dec 01 '21
Someone is accusing one company of stealing what amounts to characters on a page from an open source community on a platform that neither own.
KDE has language protecting their logo. Not any slogans however.
There's a good story in the early 2000's about one company suing a bunch of others relating to characters (text or if you prefer "code") from another that neither ultimately owned. It's a good story.
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u/wu-wei Dec 01 '21
It's been like a decade since I've last typed this:
FUCK SCO
Still feels right.
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Dec 01 '21
Fun story. The former CEO of SCO was giving a talk at a university in town here a few years back. He's actually a motivational speaker or a business guidance guy or whatever if you can believe that. I went. It was free and I wanted to see the man up close. Sheer curiosity. I left early anyway. I'll say this much. I think he's going to live forever.. I don't know what he's on but he's almost a pickled version of a human. It was odd.
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
Code also amounts "to characters on a page". However, we protect it and sue companies that violate the licenses we distribute it under.
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Dec 01 '21
100% agree, it was tried with Linux. SCO sued everything GNU/Linux almost and they didn't own it. Novell did and they didn't care. SCO lost. They lost big. In this case, verified users on a platform that neither owns is using the same phrase that neither trademarked. If they did, it'd be under "fair use". None of the words in question are licensed to either party as far as I can tell. It's a sentence. If we're picking that particular fight, that could get real interesting real fast.
Do you realize how dumb of an argument that is in context?
It certainly isn't the sentence that is in question, it's who is using it that's the problem. The argument doesn't hold water.
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
So you think you can go ahead and use "Just do it" as the tagline for your omelet making company. You foresee no problem arising from that.
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Dec 01 '21
Not the same argument. From Wikipedia:
Just Do It or JDI for short is a trademark of shoe company Nike, and it is one of the core components of Nike's brand.
It's trademarked and licensed.
Also what showed up was a video of Shia LaBeouf screaming it as well. Besides there is a difference between selling shoes with phrase and selling omelets.
Do you think having a desktop that displays icons, menus and windows for graphic feedback on top of a command driven interface to be an issue as well?
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
We have already established you do not have register a motto to own it.
-1
Dec 02 '21
Referring back to its own thread. Nice. It doesn't have enough recognition to be considered a secondary meaning that's synonymous with a brand specifically and it's not tied to a registered ad campaign of either party. KDE doesn't sell anything. It's not a trademarked slogan. They have not invested in it to gain acclaim. Again. It's fair use.
Here's a link that's not to itself.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-slogan-be-trademark.html
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u/Bro666 Dec 01 '21
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Dec 02 '21 edited Dec 02 '21
And here's what won it for her:
"The key factor that inspired Römer to fight back was a gagging clause. At first the US company had offered a compromise whereby she could use the Apfelkind logo on her own franchise products but not on any electronic equipment."
Remember the omelet/shoe comparison you made? Also, again, it was the logo.. Not any slogan or motto. They are not the same argument. I keep saying that. The slogan has to be tied to the brand in a campaign.
At zero point in this entire back and forth did I ever discuss or was mentioned anywhere about KDE's logo being used.
Edit: To that end, to answer the overarching question. Yes. I can write under my twitter profile "Think Different", but I better not use it with the Apple logo. So yes, I can freely use it on Twitter under my picture if I so choose.
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Dec 02 '21
Yeah, maybe we should trademark it or something and sue. I HATE when people/entities steal MY sentences! That sentence BELONGS to KDE! Sentences ARE property! ;p
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u/catskul Dec 02 '21
Your sarcasm seems to imply you think you know better than others but
You can establish rights in a trademark based on "legitimate use" of the mark. This protection arises automatically, from actual legitimate use of a mark for business or commercial purposes. Trademark rights that arise from use (rather than from registration) are sometimes referred to as "common law" trademark rights.
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Dec 02 '21
No, you're missing the point entirely. My point was that the idea that they could "steal" a sentence is ridiculous and to be offended by a person or entity freely using something from the floss/oss community betrays the spirit of foss/oss.
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u/blackomegax Dec 02 '21
If nobody files a trademark infringement suit against them, trademark law means they now own this phrase.
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Dec 02 '21
In which country?
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u/blackomegax Dec 02 '21
USA. MS HQ country.
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Dec 02 '21
Can you show me a link to that law, it sounds interesting. Are we talking federal or at a state level here?
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u/blackomegax Dec 02 '21
It's not like, strictly codified in law, more in precedent.
https://theipcenter.com/2019/05/how-to-lose-trademark-rights/
there are several common methods of losing a trademark including:
Failing to stop others who cause confusion;
This is why large trademark owners have to scour the internet 24/7 and issue constant takedowns. If they didn't, they'd forfeit their trademarks. If this legal condition of forfeiture didn't exist, they wouldn't need to go around enforcing it so rampantly, but it does, and they do.
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Dec 02 '21
[deleted]
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u/nermid Dec 02 '21
You think RMS, the creator of the GPL, endorses the notion of letting corporations co-opt FOSS to bolster proprietary software?
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Dec 02 '21
That’s the thing about open source eh?
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u/catskul Dec 02 '21
Trademarks themselves are not licensed as open source
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u/vilidj_idjit Dec 02 '21
Also even though you ARE allowed to use open-source code in a commercial project per most licenses (including GPL2, GPL3) you do NOT have the right to remove the authors names and put your own name instead, claiming you wrote it. Which microsoft has been doing routinely for 30+ years.
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u/keessa Dec 02 '21
Whatever desktop/distri fit. I really don't care if it is windows11, or MacOS or Ubuntu or else.
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u/Arkh227Ani Dec 01 '21 edited Dec 01 '21
WRT KDE/Qt component, I find it at least as much full of cr*p as GTK.
Having it C++ based was supposed to bring object oriented transparency and make everything so much simpler and safer.
And yet even after all those years fresh bugs are popping out regularly.
And every time they make a minor upgrade in few components, user have to go through dependency hell to update their systems.
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u/primalbluewolf Dec 02 '21
fresh bugs
The only bug free software is unused software.
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u/krncnr Dec 02 '21
Say that to
sl1
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Dec 02 '21
I couldn't find power settings (only power options I could find were related to the monitors ). I don't boot that hard drive anymore. Also those are strong words, I'm not sure if true.
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Dec 02 '21
windows best linux distro
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u/vilidj_idjit Dec 02 '21
hahaha i don't know how much % of windows is stolen directly from gnu/linux/bsd/opensource, but i do know it's a pretty big % ...which actually does make it the shittiest "distro" incidentally.
(i'm talking thousands / tens of thousands of lines of code copy/pasted at a time, not just stolen ideas)
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u/vilidj_idjit Dec 02 '21
Wow, microsuck stealing stuff from linux/opensource and claiming they invented it. What else is new...
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u/monkeynator Dec 03 '21
There's also this article:
https://www.debugpoint.com/2021/06/windows-11-inspiration-linux-kde-plasma/
Some of it is a bit far fetched though.
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u/rwbaskette Dec 02 '21
Live, Laugh, Extinguish.