Postgres Core Team launches unprecedented attack against the Postgres Community | Hacker News Reader

Postgres Core Team launches unprecedented attack against the Postgres Community

postgresql.fund

22 pointsahachete9 comments

Álvaro: what is your rationale for doing this? If you just want to strengthen the postgres community, just be a part of it then use your company and foundation to promote it. Why the need to own trademarks?

It seems like you have some other reasons to do this? Have you had trouble using the postgres trademarks in something you've been trying to do? Have you had trouble with the existing governance structure?

In your posts you bring up a lot of hypotheticals, about how postgres claims to be something but is allegedly not that (through its legal structure). Why is there a need to change that? Other than theory.

My understanding so far is that OP runs 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) 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

This is a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512274

OP here.

Folks in the HN community - there is no good reason to downvote/flag OP's comment here, it's clearly not violating any guidelines. Please do not reflex-downvote out of a sense of casual moral outrage, as it's only hurting the community's stated goal of having thoughtful discussion.

I think it would be better to limit discussion to the original thread

Álvaro, what kind of powers have you granted yourself in Article 15 of your statutes?

"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."

Is this hostile towards open membership community models?

The point of trademarks is to be able to clearly say "SomeName is X", or in context, to be able to refer to a specific kit of software, not a fork or the such, not a competing DB, etc, but to know that when I say "PostgreSQL" I'm talking about PostgreSQL

> Fundación PostgreSQL “allows [their trademarks] to be used freely, under all provisions of goods and services covered by the respective Nice classifications, under the registered designations, provided that its use constitutes a fair use aligned with the Goals of the Foundation as specified in its Statutes"

Doesn't seem to give anyone a useful trademark, well except for an anarchist perhaps!

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512274

You’re tripping and reaching so far it can only be conceptualized in a virtual, abstract space like the internet

Reply on news.ycombinator.com