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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    WinShame Was: Name changes to KDE apps in Corel Linux
From:       Gary Meyer <gary () meyer ! net>
Date:       1999-11-05 17:59:21
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To see the most shamefully configured KDE desktop ever, look at an old screenshot of
my laptop at http://24.8.19.113/winshame.gif.  I did this a while back and took a
screenshot.

Look at the menu, the window buttons, and the terminal window.  I renamed most every
application.  Names such as Notepad, Dial-Up Networking, etc.  It was really tempting
to create a few more xpm's, write some scripts, hack the panel a little, and package
it up.

It was based upon RH 6.0 and KDE1.1.1.

No flames please.  I think I did this at the same time of this mailing list's
infamous hemp thread. ;-)

-- Gary

"Byron C. Servies" wrote:

> Why do you consider the names to be a problem for your distribution?  KDE ships
> with all 4 distributions I currently own and none of them felt the need to change
> the names of the applications for trademark reasons.
>
> Also, as a customer, I would become extremely upset if you changed the names of
> common applications.  One of the reasons I like linux is that I can pick up almost
> any O'Reilly book and the instructions they give work.  This is not always true on
> HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, or Irix, and it really makes me mad.
>
> I know you are not talking about prorams like 'ls', but I don't want your office
> suite bad enough to want to re-learn the names of the applications I use every
> day, and even though I am a Mac user, I don't like digging through hierarchical
> menus for application icons.
>
> My 2 cents,
>
> Byron
>
> On 11/5/1999 at 9:22 AM, gexcfxyy@umail.corel.com (Erich Forler) wrote:
>
> > In general the names we selected were specifically of a nature that they can not
> > likely be trademarked. I'm not a lawyer so I may be over simplifying this a
> > little, but if an application name is essentially a common, generic description
> > of the application then it probably can't be trademarked. For example, "Text
> > Editor" probably can't be trademarked, but "Funky Text Transmogrifier" probably
> > could be. The lines, however, are very fuzzy, as they always are in the legal
> > world so this is just a guideline and not a hard rule. The only way to be sure a
> > name doesn't infringe on someone's trademark is to do a trademark search (which
> > of course costs money).
> >
> > So, in general, the names we've chosen probably can't be trademarked, and if
> > someone else tried, it would likely be difficult for them to insist that we stop
> > since we started using it first. Again, I'm not a lawyer so there could be some
> > disagreement on my interpretation.
> >
> > Erich
> >
> > Gary Meyer wrote:
> >
> > > Also, is there anyway to trademark or copyright the names with GPL so nobody
> > > else can take them?
> > >
> > > You seem to describe a process to confirm that nobody else has taken the
> > > names yet.  What prohibits someone from taking one of those names tomorrow?
> > >
> > > -- Gary
> > >
> > > Mosfet wrote:
> > >
> >

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