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?
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.)
> 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.
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.
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?
* 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.
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.
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.
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"?
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 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.)
Yet this is public (as in the public registries).
Please contact us if you want further information.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
> 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.
(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)
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?
What companies do they work for?
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.