Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community | Hacker News Reader

Trademark Actions Against the PostgreSQL Community

postgresql.org

283 pointsalch-121 comments

Here is the full response from Álvaro Hernández at Fundación PostgreSQL:

https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post...

as referred to by Álvaro’s (hn user ahachete’s) comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514523

I am repeating the link because ahachete was getting downvoted here and he also started a new thread instead of continuing this one.

My bad. Thanks.

This group attempted to register the trademark by extension to the USPTO and was denied for several reasons. Reason #2 for the denial was "Likelihood of Confusion" and points at the existing PostgreSQL trademark on file.

https://www3.wipo.int/madrid/monitor/en/showData.jsp?ID=ROM.... -> Real-time Status and then -> Documents -> United States of America -> (PDF link) https://madrid.wipo.int/documentaccess/documentAccess?docid=...

Álvaro Hernández here apparently runs a PostgreSQL consulting firm [1] and controls "Fundación PostgreSQL." Would Fundación PostgreSQL have the power to grant exclusive use of the trademark to the consulting firm?

[1] https://ongres.com/about-us/#team

Just to play devil's advocate — OOC, what do you think the end game for Álvaro would be under this scenario?

Under the most cynical interpretation, I guess he'd convert Ongres from a Postgres consultancy to a trademark troll and sue other companies who try to use "Postgres"? Maybe, but that's a pretty serious professional change, and seems a little unlikely, especially given that's a considerable chance that he loses the trademark again if it does end up in court.

For my money, the most likely explanation is that it was a land grab move for prestige purposes that went too far. (And one which may backfire as Google ties this press release to his name.)

Trademark trolling is specifically the use case for this. Sue every sub $300k/yr company than mentions that they use PostgreSQL in their stack. They won't have the funds to defend themselves, he makes off with $10k-$30k in settlements and goes on to the next one until a court stops him.

I get the impression that Álvaro has issues with the governance of the core team and PGCAC and thus wanted trademarks to protect his consultancy that were under the control of his non-profit which he believes has stricter governance. He also seems to be interested in leveraging the trademarks to force governance changes on the core team and PGCAC.

Yeah. My comments are from before Alvaro started commenting in this thread, and I've since changed my position based on reading his responses.

> He also seems to be interested in leveraging the trademarks to force governance changes on the core team and PGCAC.

This is it. The strategy was to acquire the trademarks and then use them as leverage to force the dissolution of Postgres Core and its associated organizations, to be replaced with a new power structure which includes him as a key member.

The very last part is me editorializing somewhat (although it's not very much of a stretch), but he's been quite explicit about the rest of it.

Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution. Its governing board cannot have more than 40% members of the same company. Please go to https://postgresql.fund/ and read the Statutes.

Actually, a "Fundación" in Spain is an entity specially scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice, and could never to anything like this. It is meant to be for the public good.

Besides, this very same question could have been applied to the Core Team members that are employees of EDB and/or Crunchy, two entities that control the majority of Core. And Core is not even a non-profit, it's nothing (there's no legal entity behind). Or the PostgreSQL Association of Canada, which is an association which could definitely grant exclusive trademark use to a given entity, as it is not scrutinized by a country's Ministry, as a Fundación in Spain is.

The only name I can find on the "Fundación PostgreSQL" web site is yours. The PostgreSQL core team membership is listed on postgresql.org and includes 7 members from 4 different companies. I agree that perhaps the PostgreSQL core team could and should have more diversity than it does, and not just in terms of who employs them ... but an organization with only one publicly-disclosed member is not somehow better.

I agree that we need to enhance the website and give more visibility to the people behind the foundation. We will do so shortly.

Yet this is public (as in the public registries).

Please contact us if you want further information.

Just post the list here to get the ball rolling?

Rubén J. Bravo, Manuel Argiz, César Calvo Pinilla, Alberto Picón and myself.

I have been a PostgreSQL hacker since 2008 and a PostgreSQL user for many years before that. The first mention of my name in the PostgreSQL commit log is in 2003, and the first version of PostgreSQL that I used was 7.something; it couldn't drop columns yet.

Now that doesn't mean that I know every person who does good work on behalf of PostgreSQL, but it does mean that I expect to recognize the names of most people who have been involved in the project to a significant degree. And the only one of those names I recognize is yours.

I tried a quick Google search of each name with "site:postgresql.org" and the only one of those names that gets any hits is, again, yours. That means that, as far as Google knows, not a single one of those people has posted even a single message to any PostgreSQL mailing list ever. Needless to say, that's not close to true for any current member of the PostgreSQL core team, or a vast number of people who are not on the core team but who are involved in the project to greater or lesser extents.

It is true that the PostgreSQL community is distributed, and not everything happens or is required to happen on postgresql.org. But I think it is nevertheless extremely difficult to argue that a group of people who have never posted there even once are a more legitimate group to be in charge of PostgreSQL's trademarks than the PostgreSQL core team.

Postgres is not only about code. It's a Community. Contributions are more than code.

We value team membership by their abilities, and values. Those may prove better at building Community that C programming ability.

Yet you are wrong when you state that Core Team holds trademarks. Core is not even a legal entity (the main mistake that I've been voicing for years; it should).

Instead, there's a "loosely associated" association in Canada (PAC), with a governing board as opaque as Core, that holds the trademarks. Let's even assume this is OK.

But then, PEU (https://www.postgresql.eu/) also holds trademarks! Why? Is PEU an "official" association in any way? (if so, there should be a process and rules to become official, but there aren't).

So if Core (read: PAC) is the only one who should hold the trademarks, why is not Core/PAC also suing and publicly bashing against PEU? What makes PEU special? What makes legally PEU different from other Postgres NPOs?

I've been asking this question for years, including many times during this "debate" with Core/PEU/PAC about the trademarks. No answer.

> (if so, there should be a process and rules to become official, but there aren't)

I'm not 100% sure, but you seem to be looking for https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/npos/ ?

Those organizations are then in turn listed at https://www.postgresql.org/about/donate/

No, I mean the "rules" that would enable a NPO to be able to hold IP for the project. There are no rules for that, yet PostgreSQL Europe holds trademarks and domain names for the PostgreSQL project.

And nobody has asked them, neither sued them, for this. Indeed, PostgreSQL Europe joined together with Canada to sue Fundación.

But PostgreSQL Europe is no different from Fundación: just a Postgres NPO.

But they are different:

PGEU is directly affiliated and acknowledged by the PostgreSQL community, whereas Fundación is not. This can be seen by the absence of Fundación on the donations page (where PGEU is listed), the lack of mailing list for Fundación (general-eu is maintained by or allocated for PGEU), and it is missing from IRC/external webpages/Local User Groups pages (#postgresql-eu is under management of PGEU). As such, you should not call Fundación a "Postgres NPO", as it is unaffiliated with the main PostgreSQL project.

Furthermore, Fundación does not seem to have a fair and transparent method for the community to get involved; instead of association members voting for the board (Patronage) the board seemingly appoints their own members (Art. 10(2) of Statutes). Lastly, Fundación has no well-defined trademark policy (only fair use, so I would be unable to start my local PostgreSQL Community (Netherlands) without infringing on the trademark).

PGEU however is transparent in who can become a member (~anyone in Europe), how the board is elected (popular vote by all members of proposed member candidates) and clearly describes in what conditions these brands may be used other than the normal fair use policy.

> But they are different:

> PGEU is directly affiliated and acknowledged by the PostgreSQL community, whereas Fundación is not.

But that just begs the question[§], doesn't it: So how does one become "affiliated and acknowledged"; why is it that PGEU is and Fundación is not? (AFAICS ATM: Cronyism, pure and simple.)

___

[§]: Unless it doesn't; I can never remember how that weird expression works.

That page directly answers your question? It says "To become recognised as an NPO, the organisation must self-certify that they meet the criteria below, aimed at ensuring they meet the standards of openness expected in the PostgreSQL Community". The Fundación refuses to meet the standards outlined in this document, for example the standard that "The board of directors MUST be elected by the membership, and all members including any corporate members MUST have an equal vote."

(The page in question then also goes on to say "The PostgreSQL Core Team may recognise, not recognise, or rescind a previous recognition of any organisation without justification, regardless of whether or not the criteria above are met.", but that's irrelevant here because the baseline requirements are not even met)

What "that" page? Aha, the page linked from the five comments up-thread... If it's as well hidden on the site -- which I'd say it is, linked as it is from a page with the semi-unrelated title ans subject of "Donate", and lacking an entry of its own in the tree on the left -- as in the comments here, then no wonder ahachete maybe just couldn't find it.

And either way, it still doesn't answer ahachete's question:

>>> So if Core (read: PAC) is the only one who should hold the trademarks, why is not Core/PAC also suing and publicly bashing against PEU? What makes PEU special? What makes legally PEU different from other Postgres NPOs?

Sure, so PGEU is apparently "acknowledged as affiliated". But where does it say that this confers rights to use the trademark, and anything else doesn't? Is this "affiliation acknowledgment" a concept in trademark law; and if so, is that Spanish, EU, US, or international trademark law? (I very much doubt it features in any of them.)

>>> I've been asking this question for years, including many times during this "debate" with Core/PEU/PAC about the trademarks. No answer.

It's great that you pointed me (albeit indirectly) to that page of criteria, but maybe the people ahachete asked could have done the same for him.

> The page in question then also goes on to say "The PostgreSQL Core Team may recognise, not recognise, or rescind a previous recognition of any organisation without justification, regardless of whether or not the criteria above are met.", but that's irrelevant

Oh, I don't know that it is all that irrelevant, at least in a larger context. Quite apart from ahachete's tribulations: Are all contributors aware that they've donated their efforts to be so capriciously allowed -- or not, as the case may be -- to be traded upon by others, and apparently without recourse to any due process?

> Rubén J. Bravo, Manuel Argiz, César Calvo Pinilla, Alberto Picón

What companies do they work for?

> Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution.

What about private individuals? Specifically, you?

Quoting the charter here: https://postgresql.fund/documents/Fundacion_PostgreSQL-Statu...:

""" Article 13. Honorary Members. ... 2. The Founder, Mr. Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa, is Honorary Life Member as the Honorary President of the Foundation, appointment that is not incompatible with any other post at the Foundation or the Patronage. He can assist the Patronage acts with voice. He doesn’t have the right to vote, unless his status of elected or founding Member of the Patronage applies. """

It goes on to say:

""" Article 15. Duties of the Patronage. During its performance, the Patronage must comply with the required under current legislation and the willingness of the Founder expressed in this Statutes. """

I have to admit that this document is above my reading comprehension level. What does this actually mean?

In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice. This means, among other things, that:

* Every action of its board is supervised by the Ministry of Justice. * No action or change to the status can go against the initial will (which is part of the Estatutes, in particular Articles 3 and 4). Even if anyone would try to change them, they could only be done in a way that respects them. This is what is called "the founder's will".

So it's a very protective non-profit, which always needs to serve the public good and the founder's wills, which are Articles 3 and 4. And there's even public supervision for this.

We believed this form of a non-profit is much stronger and better to protect a Community like Postgres from potential rogue actors.

As an aside, we contemplate honorary (non-voting) members. We believe is a good thing. I'd also propose the same for Core --I believe at least Bruce Momjian should be named as such.

> This is what is called "the founder's will".

Just to be clear: you're saying that "the founder's will" should not be interpreted as meaning "what Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa [the founder for life] decides"?

No, the Founder's are the Founding members (5).

In any case, read the will: Article's 3 and 4. Do you disagree with them? Do you think they are bad for Postgres, or good?

Do you support that will?

Because if so, this will is a powerful asset of this NPO, as it cannot be (significantly) changed. However, Core's will, as well as PEU and PAC's will, could be changed in a way that would go against Postgres.

In your longer response https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post... you say that the advantage of the Fundación over the core team is that it is protects against PostgreSQL being acquired:

> In other words: a PostgreSQL association may be turned into a cooking, or into an Oracle association; whereas Fundación PostgreSQL will always remain a PostgreSQL nonprofit, for the sole benefit of the PostgreSQL Community.

and

> If one of the main resilience strategies of the PostgreSQL Community is to have a distributed IP strategy, which protects it from being bought, why is one part of the Community legally threatening another part?

But I do not see anything in Articles 3 and 4 that addresses this. Suppose a majority of PostgreSQL developers were to accept job offers from Oracle and the Core Team decided to rebrand it as "Oracle PostgreSQL". I don't see anything in Articles 3 and 4 that would prevent the Fundación from recognizing Oracle PostgreSQL as the legitimate / real PostgreSQL. It simply talks about "the Open Source software known as PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org)", and as you know, Oracle's MySQL is still known as "MySQL" and still is at www.mysql.org.

In fact, Articles 3 and 4 would obligate the Fundación to support Oracle, to contribute to Oracle, to assign copyright to Oracle if they added that requirement (the Fundación is required to contribute to PostgreSQL, and there is no clause saying "unless it requires assigning copyright"), to promote Oracle PostgreSQL, and so forth. Right?

That is to say, it seems to me that it is an advantage that PEU and PAC do not have any such commitment to stick with whoever happens to call themselves "PostgreSQL" today, and a disadvantage that the Fundación must convince the Ministry of Justice that Oracle's leadership of MySQL (which has been fine, not great but certainly MySQL is a usable product) has actually been so bad that the founding documents need to be changed.

(I am not much of a Postgres user, and I know basically nothing of how it runs, and I also know nothing of Spanish law, so I'm definitely not trying to say that you're wrong and they're right. I'm just trying to understand what your claim is and how it works.)

> No, the Founder's are the Founding members (5).

The document says:

"The Founder [singular], Mr. Alvaro Carlos Hernandez Tortosa, is Honorary Life Member..."

It goes on to say:

"...the willingness of the Founder [singular] expressed in this Statutes"

See why I'm connecting the two sentences?

Don't you think that this choice of words is, at the very least, confusing? Maybe you should issue a clarification on your blog. Perhaps it's all just a misunderstanding.

> In Spain, a Foundation is a very strong legal entity scrutinized by the Ministry of Justice.

And US corporations are also "legal entities scrutinized by" the DOJ and the SEC.

Look how well that works. The fact that people can sue you if they have enough money does not really make this any more trustworthy than anything else.

It feels an awful lot like you are throwing around terms like a smokescreen and hoping people don't understand Spanish law well enough to confront you about it.

Can you please make your affiliation with Fundación PostgreSQL clear in both your bio and a disclaimer in the comments you write here? Thanks.

Sure. Fundación PostgreSQL co-founder and current President.

Don't forget 'Founder for Life'

Once you've founded something you can't un-found it, so aren't all founders founders for life?

> Fundación PostgreSQL is a 100% independent non-profit organization not tied to any company or any other institution.

I think that it is highly dubious that a foundation that claims to be independent (from the PostgreSQL project, I suppose), with no ties to any other PostgreSQL community foundations and/or associations ("company or institution"), claims "PostgreSQL" or derivatives of the brand as its trademark.

I could not find any reason to believe that the organization behind postgresql.fund is in any way affiliated with the PostgreSQL project, as I could not find it mentioned on any of the official affiliations pages (has no mailing list, events, IRC, LUG mention, nor a link in the international sites section). I repeat, I believe that postgresql.fund claiming ownership of the PostgreSQL brand (or basic derivatives thereof) in any category is highly dubious.

Perhaps for legal reasons it is important to show willingness to negotiate .. but really, a land-grab like this gets "we hope we can be friends" response ?

"The PostgreSQL Core Team and PGCAC still hope for an amicable resolution" ..

I think it just means "outside of court".

It shows the benevolence of the PostgreSQL Community(TM) ;-)

I think this is the morally right way to handle the issue. This way they also accumulate good-will if they need to take stronger legal actions. I like it.

It's worth noting that (from the article) the offender in this case isn't some gigantic organization like Amazon — it's basically one guy, and one who considers himself to be a member in good standing whose part of the Postgres community.

I'd hazard a guess that by taking this public, the Postgres team is trying to create some pressure on him through public opinion in the hope that he sees reason and it doesn't have to become a long and arduous legal battle which benefits no one.

And it really shouldn't have to. It's not clear what Álvaro's actual motives are in trying to usurp the Postgres trademark — it could be some cynical profiteering thing, but hopefully it was just some momentary hubris that can still be walked back and resolved amicably.

Yeah, I'm guessing this is just an ego thing that got out of hand. Hopefully he comes around before both sides waste a lot of resources in court.

Getting some arduino.cc vs arduino.org vibes here.

> usurp

[Citation needed]

I mean, assume good faith, strongest possible reading, etc etc: Isn't it perfectly possible that he's actually just doing exactly what he says he's doing?

The "PostgreSQL Community" is supposed to be decentralised, with no intellectual property held by any single entity to target in a hostile takeover, so he's just doing his bit to help decentralise holding of trademarks.

Seems a perfectly plausible reading of events; far from "cynical profiteering", nor even "momentary hubris".

That's not an offer to give ground to them in any material way. The next sentence says "the PostgreSQL Core Team and PGCAC will pursue all options until" the land-grabbing group surrenders all their land-grab claims.

That's just saying: we hope they'll recognize that what they're doing doesn't make any sense, and give it up rather than pursue a fight all the way through the legal process.

There’s literally no way any of the filed trademarks will be granted if the core team files opposition.

Don’t waste your time “negotiating”.

Also, the core team should use their Canadian (or whichever country they have earliest file date in) to file for a WIPO/Madrid mark.

I hope you're right. This fella seems a bit like a trademark troll.

Are OnGres or Álvaro Hernández active in PostgreSQL development, or otherwise active in the community?

Or have they appeared out of nowhere?

I believe this is their HN profile, see for yourself (as indicated by comments from them in this thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ahachete

Personally I'm interested in hearing more from them, as they don't fit the "trademark troll" description that commenters seem to be taking for granted here. Seeing some interesting discussion dynamics at play.

At the same time though, they aren't playing the role of good community citizen either. It's really confusing to see what the motivations are here.

Why openly antagonize a community that you claim to be a part of and represent? I hope there is more to it, but otherwise, this just seems like a stunt.

Surely @ahachete must realize that the Postgres Core team must defend their trademarks (otherwise they can be lost or lose protection). And either way, I just don't see the endgame here.

Yes I'm a bit confused about their motivations too. Sharing what I've pieced together so far (and trying to approach this from a good-faith perspective):

My understanding so far is that they run a Postgres consulting firm [1], and it appears they took the liberty of registering a Postgres trademark for the class of "professional services" in order to (I presume) protect fair use by their firm and (they claim in their response) by others in the Postgres community.

Some of this is admittedly speculation on my part, and I'm trying to take a charitable view of their actions to try to understand why a community member would do this.

That said I have no opinion on whether this action is net good for the community, and I'm not a Postgres user so I have no horse in this race. It's just the social dynamics of this situation that are interesting to me.

[1]: https://ongres.com/about-us/#team

Actually, IMHO, it's the Core team + PAC + PEU who have acted in bad faith.

As the post states, with dates, there has never been any communication from them to discuss this matter. Only through laywers, since day 0. Even some of them, long-time personal friends of mine, where shut of and were banned to communicate even at a personal level. Not even with laywers present.

There was no need to make all this public. This clearly hurts the Community.

As the post says, there's no explanation to why PEU, who is as legit as any other non-profit Postgres association, including Fundación PostgreSQL, can hold trademarks and not being sued and publicly bashed.

If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación? Conversely: if there should be one trademark holder (and we agree, read the proposal we submitted to them which got no reply!) then it should be a legal entity with more solid grounds than current Core's Group (which has no legal entity behind) or PAC, which is a quite opaque association too.

> As the post states, with dates, there has never been any communication from them to discuss this matter. Only through laywers, since day 0. Even some of them, long-time personal friends of mine, where shut of and were banned to communicate even at a personal level. Not even with laywers present.

That's sort of a nonsensical take. Of course people with any sort of connection to the other side would be advised not to speak to you without a lawyer, and not to speak with a lawyer if they had nothing legally relevant to add. Your actions with regard to copyright were legal in nature, you should expect a legal response.

I think the very valid question in this is were you contacted in 2020 and told to cease and desist using a legal trademark by the current owners, and did you fail to do so? If that's true, I'm not sure what defense you have. As I see it, the only responsible action at that time if you really care about the issues you raise would be to cease and desist and open an dialogue that is not subject to legal proceedings and their need to defend their copyright lest they lose it.

> there should be one trademark holder (and we agree, read the proposal we submitted to them which got no reply!) then it should be a legal entity with more solid grounds than current Core's Group (which has no legal entity behind) or PAC, which is a quite opaque association too.

That's not for you to decide. The correct way to go about that is not to make the holding entity and then try to surreptitiously acquire the trademark, but to have approached the community first. Did you approach the community prior to attempting to take over an aspect of their management and holdings, or not? If you did, what was the response?

> The correct way to go about that is not to make the holding entity and then try to surreptitiously acquire the trademark, but to have approached the community first. Did you approach the community prior to attempting to take over an aspect of their management and holdings, or not? If you did, what was the response?

Yes, this is the case. Indeed, many times. I have personally voiced many concerns about different aspects of the governance and workings of the Community. And in 2019 a very clear and significant case was raised when some dispute over IP (a domain name) surfaced. In this case, we declined used of the domain name following Core's request, but raised --again-- concerns over the governance of Postgres.

The answer to all of these requests? Outright denial. Silence. Nada. There is no willing to change anything. Also one year later I voiced some of these concerns publicly (https://postgresql.fund/blog/is-it-time-to-modernize-postgre...). Same outcome.

So yes, I have at a personal level and we have at the Foundation level tried everything we believed could be done. And we perceived trademarks are more at risk with PAC and PEU than us, and we saw that some were not registered, so we proceeded to protect them and offer them openly to the Postgres Community (https://postgresql.fund/trademarks).

And as stated publicly, we're ready to transfer them to a single entity. It just can't be the current ones.

> we declined used of the domain name following Core's request, but raised --again-- concerns over the governance of Postgres.

So does the community agree with your stance? A majority of them? Or are you forcing your opinion on the majority by taking action in their name without knowing their stance on the subject?

I have to be honest, it's hard to understand what makes you think you've the right to make these demands of the the community and the leadership. Perhaps it's all much more obvious to someone with more knowledge of the situation, or if you put forth more info that you assume people know, but from the outside nothing you've stated really makes your actions sound justified to my eyes.

> And as stated publicly, we're ready to transfer them to a single entity. It just can't be the current ones.

Honestly, this just sounds like you're holding something hostage and arguing in bad faith. "Sure we'll give back what we took, just not to you because we don't like you, which is why we took it, so designate someone else and we promise we'll give your stuff to them."

> Only through laywers

Of course they will only talk via lawyers! That's what they have to do to make sure that all communication is clear, documented, and not misinterpreted (by either party). Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

And as soon as this escalates to a lawsuit, the existence of the dispute will be public.

>If PEU can hold trademarks, why can't Fundación?

No one is saying that they/you can't hold trademarks. You just can't register ones that would be confusing to the public (which is the purpose of trademarks -- to avoid public confusion). And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing.

From the PostgreSQL EU website (as linked by you), these are their specific trademarks:

PGConf, PGDay, Postgres Conference, PostgreSQL Conference

These don't seem to be confusing about what the database itself is called, or how the project is managed. Trying to trademark "PostgreSQL" and "PostgreSQL Community" is way too confusing with respect to the primary project. You're basically trying to take over the global naming rights for the entire project. Whatever the relationship is between Postgres Core and PostgreSQL EU (and it is a bit opaque), that's not for you to judge and it has no bearing on what rights you feel Fundación has to the trademark "Postgres" or "PostgreSQL".

One reason why you're getting slammed so hard on this is that these have been hard learned lessons in the FOSS community over the past few decades. Trademarks are one of the few FOSS-compatible ways to protect projects, names, and publicity -- especially against commercial entities that may not have the best intentions. They must be defended in order to protect these projects.

And I'm sorry, but the global stability of the Postgres project is far more important than whatever good intentions you had.

> Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers.

So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied.

> And honestly, even the domain name postgr.es is confusing.

That domain is held by PostreSQL Europe. So according to your argument, they shouldn't hold it.

> From the PostgreSQL EU website (as linked by you), these are their specific trademarks:

That they are more or less confusing is something I may agree with. But I don't see why it may change the subject matter: if the agreement would be that only a single entity would hold them, so be it. PEU can't definitely do that, under no circumstance.

"Funnily" enough, PEU is also one of the entities suing Fundación in the courts. Indeed, on the very first letter, as our post mentions, they are presented with PAC as if they were part of the same: "in representation of both the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada and PostgreSQL Europe ("individually and collectively")".

So your argument that PEU's are not confusing is not what is at stakes here. It is that two entities, unrelated and separated, want to be the steward of the trademarks in Postgres. And if a third one tries to help, covering some observed gaps, it is sued by both. That is potentially collusion.

> And I'm sorry, but the global stability of the Postgres project is far more important than whatever good intentions you had.

I agree. But then why https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/trademark-actions-agai... is posted publicly? If the matter is in the courts (as it is), why is it needed to bring it publicly? We're happy to defend ourselves in private and in the public if needed, but I don't see what they win by this, and I see how it goes against the whole Community.

I'm sure you have read in our post that "The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer, permanently and irrevocably, all domain names, trademarks and other IP assets to the new NPO. New, clear and non discretionary rules will be established to allow fair use of the PostgreSQL trademarks by any stakeholder.". So it's not that we're unwilling to transfer the trademarks to the "Community". It's just that we disagree what the governing bodies of that community should be, believing that the current ones are a great liability and need urgent reform.

Of course, they don't want reform, so they chose to bash us publicly when the matter is in the courts. Who's harming the Community then? Are the trademarks currently registered by Fundación not offered to the public, with indeed less restrictions than PAC and PEU's? (https://postgresql.fund/trademarks).

> The PostgreSQL Association of Canada; Postgres Europe; and Fundación PostgreSQL will transfer...

The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.

I have been working on Postgres (primarily as a Postgres backend hacker) for over a decade now. The people from the first two groups are friends and colleagues. There are problems, but on the whole these people have a significant amount of moral authority for good reasons. They have at least gotten us this far.

The idea that one of the first two organizations from your list are at risk of going rogue is beyond ludicrous. There are certainly legitimate criticisms that one could make about the project's governance, but this isn't one of them.

> It's just that we disagree what the governing bodies of that community should be, believing that the current ones are a great liability and need urgent reform.

This is not reform. This is a clumsily executed power grab.

> The first two organizations are almost the same thing as the core team, for all practical purposes (unless you're a lawyer, say). There is very significant overlap in membership. A cosy arrangement, certainly. I imagine that this structure was based on certain practical considerations. Legal advice about IP and whatnot.

You acknowledge, yet fail to see the problem. That these two entities overlap so much is a very bad thing, and definitely a liability if things turn bad from a legal perspective.

This is one of the issues I have been calling for reform for many years. I understand how things evolve; but when problems are recognized, then it's time to fix them.

If we all agree (we do!) that a single entity should have all the IP for the project, that's what needs to be. "cosy" is not a valid reason for keeping the current status quo.

Actually, if you read the terms how our proposal to Core, we're ready to hand the trademarks if a not "cosy", but a solid, legal structure is established. Which doesn't exist today. And we consider this puts the project at risk.

> That these two entities overlap so much is a very bad thing, and definitely a liability if things turn bad from a legal perspective.

You are the one that is filing confusing, duplicative trademark and servicemark claims that waste the community's time. You seem to be asking me to put that aside for a moment. But I'm not willing to do that for reasons that will be obvious to most people.

> > Once the problem escalates to be a legal dispute, this is the only way communication can happen.

> But there hasn't been any other previous communication. Our first notice from them, as detailed in the post, was from their lawyers.

> So there has been no attempt on their side to come to even an amicable conversation. I offered that --but was denied.

The problem with not doing it through a lawyer is that you might inadvertently say something that could disadvantage you later on if things go to court. The value a lawyer offers here is that they're familiar with all the ins and outs of the relevant laws, and which words may or may not carry meaning if it goes to court.

In many ways it's a lose-lose situation: going through a lawyer can come off as cold, distant, and even threatening, but not doing so risks screwing yourself over. Since they don't really know you or your motivations, going through a lawyer is clearly the best option. Especially when dealing with a bad-faith actor who might do their best to twist words it can really cover yourself. You might say "of course I would never do that!" and I fully believe you're honest in that, but PostgreSQL people have no way of knowing that, not for sure anyway.

So my advice would be to not take that it went through a lawyer as "un-amicable conversation"; it's just how these things work. Maybe it shouldn't, but it is.

As for the actual meat of the matter: I read your reply on your website and some of your posts here, but I don't really understand what advantage to the wider PostgreSQL community if Fundación PostgreSQL has any trademarks, and only see potential risks. Who knows what will happen with those trademarks in five, ten, or twenty years? You could get hit by a bus tomorrow and whoever ends up in control of the foundation could be a Bad Guy™ or (possibly inadvertently) transfer the trademarks to such a person.

It seems to me that the most logical place to put the trademark is with the same people we trust with the code, and I don't see why we should trust them with the code but not the trademarks?

Thanks for this info.

The way I read/understand this comment is that

1) you took the cue of PEU registering trademarks in Europe to take the initiative and set up shop in Spain with the visibility of a locally-held trademark by a carefully-chosen representational entity (foundation)

and then

2) there has never been an opportunity to have an open-ended conversation about the events in (1).

Without further context (which may completely derail my theory and leave me very disoriented :) ), I get the impression that the other organization(s) were not expecting any of this to take place, and have subsequently reacted to it as though it were a threat.

If there *was* prior communication/discussion/negotiation, then I have no idea why they're responding like this.

Feels a lot like the Freenode story. Still not sure what the endgame is/was there either, but the outcome certainly wasn't great for the community.

I had the same thought. I don't think it's exactly the same story, but I think that it has the potential in the future. Even assuming the current parties are all operating with good intentions, if Postgres (proper) doesn't defend their trademarks, there is potential for risk in the future.

What happens if Fundación goes bankrupt and the assets (trademarks) get bought? What if they are bought by a non-benevolent company? Then we have the potential for Freenode all over again.

In the case of Spain, if a foundation bankrupts their assets can only be transferred to another non profit organization. It's against the Spanish law for a company to buy a assets of a foundation

I really doubt that’s true. It would mean that a foundation that owns any goods (buildings, rolling stock, etc.) would not be able to sell them, ever, except to other non-profits.

Are there any non-profit car wrecking companies in Spain?

I hope this clarifies our point: https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-post...

It seems like an necessarily combative headline that conflates your relatively unknown non-profit with the whole community.

If your goal is genuinely to improve the legal and governence situation of the postgres community, this seems to be am extremely poor way of doing that.

Fundación PostgreSQL is a relatively new non-profit that has run two conferences in Ibiza (in 2019 and 2020) and is planning a third in 2022.

The only organizers listed for conferences are all members of Álvaro's OnGres consulting company. There don't appear to be any details on the number of attendees or on who gave what talks.

Maybe it’s a cover-up for a company-paid party week in Ibiza? Who knows… ;-)

I read the post. I read the rebuttal.

Clearly this guy is an asshole. He may (may) not be a trademark troll, but this is a self-serving asshole move, landgrabbing to promote his business.

You know what, maybe he has honest intentions. He's still an asshole.

This. Is. Not. Yours. You don't own it. You have applied for paperwork to own it. Incredible asshole move.

Your theory of distributed ownership doesn't matter, because IT'S NOT YOURS TO OWN.

What's the end game of the Spanish org? What are they trying to achieve with this?

I'm afraid that It's just a guy with grandeur delusions.

Getting a foothold. Spain doesn’t operate on the same level as other European countries when it comes to some things, banking and trademarks would be two good examples of this.

why?

A narcissist is equating himself with a community he fancies and is attempting to force it under his control.

Shades of https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee...

Looks like he likes to write articles and has been featured by some Postgres related Twitter accounts like PostgresWeekly (https://twitter.com/PostgresWeekly).

This is the guy in question: https://twitter.com/ahachete

From https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/trademark-actions-agai... :

> In the spirit of the open source movement, the PostgreSQL community has always tried to operate transparently and fairly

Idunno, from reading both sides of this it doesn't much feel that way.

Why does this happen? What's the point of trademarks existing at all, if you have to fight for it every time someone makes a claim to it? What's the point of registration if the same trademark will be awarded again without regard to existing trademarks in the same region?

In general you are responsible for defending your trademarks and taking action if they are violated.

In non-obvious cases this makes perfect sense. There’s plenty of abandoned trademarks. This system means that you can’t just take old and forgotten trademark and start suddenly demanding money from companies that (unknowingly) infringe it.

I believe this is also the reason why big name brands sometimes go after individuals for trademark violations.

It looks like a trademark has already registered in Spain to that different organization, even though there were existing trademark registrations and an organization (PGCAC) actively looking to defend it.

Unless the PGCAC majorly messed up some process or didn't respond in time to inquiries from Spain officials, it looks to me like the system (at least in Spain?) does not work.

> ... or didn't respond in time to inquiries from Spain officials, it looks to me like the system (at least in Spain?) does not work.

As a rule you will not be contacted by the relevant trademark registering office. What happens is that the registration filing is published, and if you are opposed to it going through you will need to file opposition within a certain period after the publication.

That's why organisations with IP to protect typically directly or indirectly (that is via counsel) use trademark watching services. Essentially these scan the where ever the filings are published, and will send you alerts or whatever when something turns up on the radar.

Actually filing opposition is rather tedious and expensive, and particularly when different good/service classes are being used, sometimes difficult to actually be successful with.

I suppose that's viable, as a process. Maybe even the best we can do.

What I'm surprised about is that they call it a "registry" when it operates more like a mailing-list, where you should watch for publications and reply when you have objections. A "registered trademark" is more a "trademark advertised on the mailing-list with no objection at the time". Which is not silly, but somewhat inappropriately named.

> inappropriately named

How else should it be named? A "register" or "registry" basically means nothing more than a big book where stuff is written down -- registered. Then later, you can go to the King's scribe, he'll look in his big ledger, and testify that yes, you came before him and had him register your Marque Of Tradhe back in October 1496, and if the other guy can't point to an older entry in his name, you win.

Having herolds in town squares across the realm announce your entry on the second Market Sunday after it was entered -- i.e, announcing it on a mailing list -- is already going above and beyond mere registration.

But no one is looking at the register, you are supposed to remind everyone what you put in there every time it's relevant. This is a very unusual way to use a register...

Land is also registered, and if someone starts building on yours you tell them "Hey stop, that's my ground you're building on!". What's the difference here? The registry is there as backup proof you can point to when reminding people; isn't that how they work in all these situations? Seems the perfectly normal default way to me.

The law says they can't build there. If they do it, they are already breaking the law, because they were supposed to know. If the rightful owner doesn't react in time to stop it, they can still order the building to be teared down at the infringer's cost.

This is exactly my point, it is completely different from how the trademark registry works, were people are not expected to know. They can make their claim, and if no challenge happens, they will make it to the registry. They can do this without prejudice and rectifying the situation falls on the previous owner who has to spend significant money to make a case (one they can lose).

We (Fundación PostgreSQL) posted a new post titled "Respecting the majority, questioning the status quo as a minority": https://postgresql.fund/blog/respecting-majority-questioning...

You can question it all you want. You can't file a trademark for something that is already trademarked. EOS

Fundación PostgreSQL is just wrong for trying this. Shame on them.

Leaving aside considerations about my person, here's Fundación PostgreSQL's response and HN discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514422

In the spirit of the open source movement, the PostgreSQL community has always tried to operate transparently and fairly, and provide resources for people to adopt, use, and promote PostgreSQL. We continuously look to improve and are very much open to feedback (look no further than the discussions on our mailing lists)!

Perhaps I am just a little too young but I do find the use of mailing lists in some of the older open source projects to be a bit cumbersome in 2021. I know there are advantages to them and their semi decentralized nature is a feature but I sure do find them difficult to interact with.

Regardless of the above I do hope they come to a amicable solution and it is interesting to me to find that Postgres trade marks are held by a Canadian entity.

Cumbersone in what way?

Worse UX to this generation of developers than say Discord or other IMs I guess.

I don't think discord or slack is a great alternative as it is very ephemeral (and not really open source / decentralized) but I do think interacting with a mailing list is worse than a threaded forum type layout.

Email has had threading since before I was born.

Email has never had explicit threading - email has a bunch of usage habits that many clients interpret as attempted threading (which often results in threads of steam receipts in my gmail webview FYI).

There are a number of clients that are particularly good at respecting the specific approaches to threading used by mailing lists and that come with a plethora of powerful keyboard interactions to make browsing a whole bunch of emails trivial. But newer devs may be quite unfamiliar with those options and I don't think it's particularly easy information to learn... especially if your webmail has "just worked" for most other uses.

You've been downvoted but I believe your post is accurate. At least with regards to IMAP and any RFCs I've read myself, though I'm open to hearing from others. Much of email is absolutely implemented in client-side 'de-facto' ways.

edit: I see now in the RFC that there is a description.

> Email has never had explicit threading

The "In-Reply-To" header is described in rfc2822. It is an explicit header in the RFC that is how you create threads.

Every mail client I've used correctly understands how to thread reply-chains using In-Reply-To.

The thing you're talking about, steam receipts grouping, is not a feature of email, but a specific feature of gmail's web view which is not mandated by any RFC and indeed is not explicit threading...

But there is a real way to thread which is defined in the RFC, and if you use a reasonable email client (aka not gmail), every mailing list's threading will work for you.

Discord is amazing, especially with the advanced search features, and now threads. An open source alternative to discord like the one featured on ShowHN recently would be ideal.

The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access.

So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©.

Do I use Discord? No.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes.

Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out

Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options:

1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless

2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware

Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...

With the amount of people who don't care about the difference between 10ns and 10ms calling themselves developers, I'm sure even Clippy would be the perfect IDE for some of them, so that's not saying much. Apart from the lack of nesting, Discord and other instant messengers are way worse at creating a searchable archive, the best option AFAIK is to export the chat with third-party tools that break the TOS.. an option so bad, it's not even an option.

Let me say that I am honestly curious too.

Perhaps I am alone is this (based on the votes) but when I go to https://www.postgresql.org/list/ it requires a great deal of clicking to drill down and lets say I eventually end up some where like https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/2021-09/ I am greeted with a lot "Re:" "No subject" etc.

Perhaps what is comes down to is I am trying to interact with a mailing list using a browser which is perhaps unfair. I would say that discovering what is being talked about and the barriers to entry for subscribing/unsubscribing provide way more friction then, lets say a subreddit or even a more classical forum layout.

So the downvotes on your perfectly legitimate comment are absurd, but here we are.

To get technical, the problem that you're having isn't that interacting with mailing lists is cumbersome, but rather, interacting with mailing list archives is cumbersome. You're not wrong. Web interfaces for mailing list archives haven't really changed in yonks, and there's little incentive to do so. The only people who use the archives are the people who explicitly do not interact with the list itself.

The people who actually use mailing lists, are members of the list itself, and receive the messages in their mailbox. From that point onwards, their interaction with the mailing list is only as cumbersome as their Mail User Agent (email client, MUA). Using a decent MUA that supports threading is step one to having an enjoyable experience with a mailing list.

Unfortunately, in 2021, we've regressed from a world where we have depth of options where it comes to MUAs, to where we are now where the vast majority use webmail solutions exclusively. Webmail has definitely improved since the 90s and 00s, but unfortunately not every feature has come along for the ride, making that also tricky.

As far as the barriers to entry go, thats subjective. Subscribing to a subreddit requires creating a reddit account. Subscribing to most forums requires signing up with an email address, password, possibly username as well, along with other biographical details (optional in some cases), and validating your email is real. Subscribing to a mailing list requires signing up with an email address and validating your email is real.

Anything you're not used to using, is always going to feel more cumbersome. If "happy mailman day" doesn't mean anything to you, you probably haven't had much experience with mailing lists (or have, but much more recent).

That feels like a totally fair assessment.

I guess I would say that mailing lists favor producers over consumers.

Often when I am looking at a mailing list it is for the same reason I am poking through a GitHub issue. I am looking for someone who had a similar problem and maybe someone else had a solution.

Thus I think I am largely a consumer.

As a consumer I dont often think, let me go to my email client. My email client is where I get bills and notifications and some personal correspondence. It is definitely not where I go when I am looking to consume.

I would disagree that it is as easy as just signing up with an email. I have to set up filters etc and shift to an entirely different client after I sign up the entering an email address is just the first step.

I feel that for people who are core developers email lists are probably great. They are essentially looking to communicate with only a few people and the topics are quite specific. Where they fail me is they make it harder to convert a consumer to a producer. For all the problems I have with OSS's seemingly centralization on Github I am far more likely to drop into some random Github issue than I am to join a mailing list.

How about an interface like GitHub issues? Do you feel that strikes a balance between consumers/producers for this kind of discussions?

Edit: I think you updated your comment while I replied (or maybe I just hit reply without seing the last part of your comment). I see now that you've mentioned GitHub issues, which is a kind of interface that I've seen get a better balance, but I'm not sure how it stands from a producor pov against a mailing list (decentralization is obviously lacking on them).

GH issues does not fan out into contextual threads. That makes it a nonstarter.

They have "Discussions" now which includes threads and such, but I haven't really used it much other than leaving a comment just yesterday, so I don't really know how good or bad it is.

> I guess I would say that mailing lists favor producers over consumers.

It favors insiders and temporal information, but there's no bias on the producers vs. consumers dimension. Unfortunately, you are an outsider trying to access old information, so you are severely disfavored here. A subredit is slightly less biased against outsiders but is much more heavily biased against old information.

If you can structure your information it is almost always better in another format, but there is always something that can't.

Is there a good primer on how exactly to even use a mailing list in an efficient way? I always thought the entry point was through the archives, but I guess that's not correct?

I think you're missing the major aspect of mailing lists that is why they are used for projects like Postgres or Linux: transparency. (at least when the lists are also archived, which is a different issue).

Mailing lists lets the future user see the decision making process unfold throughout a thread. These interactions can be archived and searched. Most users don't interact with these mailing lists in realtime through an MUA. They search an archive to find the appropriate thread. And critically -- anyone on the list can build the archive. It doesn't require any special infrastructure on behalf of the list owners.

It can be cumbersome, but it's also robust. Imagine if the history was only present in bugzilla, Jira, GitHub issues, or a forum? Bug trackers aren't always the best way to work through a brand-new API design. Email back and forth with collaborators on the other hand...

Also -- mailing list archives are also ridiculously easy to index in a search engine. Data stored in bug trackers aren't always as simple...

Linux has had the LKML for almost three decades. It still works well for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list

Does it? I find it really cumbersome. We were just interacting with it the other day and found it annoyingly baroque. There's a lot of assumed knowledge and I've read a fair bit of documentation and have been following Kernel development since before my career.

It "works" for the people who it works for and that's it.

Ok, what would you suggest in it's place?

I don't have to suggest anything in its place. I'm just relaying that I've actually interacted with it for years and have found it cumbersome, and I don't think it's fair to say that it's "worked" as if it hasn't made first-contributions significantly harder for a lot of people.

At this point I might suggest Gitlab, but I don't really feel like having a back and forth about what may or may not be ideal about that.

I don't participate in any mailing lists since at least 2008 and I'm pretty sophisticated. What constitutes "works" is that they (Linux Kernel working group) have a very primitive forum (mailing list) wherein there is no recognized pressure to change. People still use HAM radio because they "work" but that's not the optimal way to collaborate.

Give it a few more decades.

I've used the LKML to contribute changes, and I'm also an amateur radio operator. I guess that makes me a fossil.

It's a shame the PostgreSQL lists dropped off Gmane. That used to be a decent way to read them.

I wonder why the pre-existing core PostgreSQL organization (not super-clear to me which this is) did already have these trademarks in the top handful of countries/jurisdictions. Rather than wait for someone else to try and then get in a potentially expensive fight. PostgreSQL has been around for 25 years, there has been ample time to figure that out, right?

Sounds like in the US at least they _do_ have trademarks, the other organisations filing was declined by the PTO because of the existing mark, see the documents linked in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513942

Likely because it is tedious (think watching paint dry) and expensive. And except if you take a shotgun approach to the service/goods classes you register in, you are still going to have exposure (in the US you need to provide proof of use down the road so its a non.starter there).

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