It started out specifically as a reaction to Rust's take on trademarks, so shipping the exact same code with a different name was the point.
I'm not sure what that accomplishes - you can use this project and there's no trademark policy so... I guess you could abuse that if you wanted to? Like you could start your own "CrabCon" and no one could say anything about it legally... ok.
Right, and like I said, that's fine. But it's pretty meaningless and actually has literally nothing to do with the language, which has no trademarks associated with it (nor could it ever have such a trademark as the foundation does not "own" the language). So forking a language over a trademark that doesn't apply to a language makes very little sense.
> They're not threatening to sue you if you don't include disclaimers on everything you do while using their language.
No one is threatening to sue anyone for using the rust programming language. That is an extremely incorrect view.
At best you could say there is a threat to sue someone for how they use certain terms or icons, but this is completely unrelated to the language itself. It's also completely standard. Further, the document in question was a draft submitted for feedback.
Almost any language is going to want trademark. Python recently had to deal with a troll trying to assert ownership over the branding because they had not defended against this. As someone mentions in an issue on the crab repo,
How would you feel about a shady company posturing as "The Official Rust" distributing a paid copy of the compiler? Does that seems like a thing we as a community should allow? That's what the trademark policy is for: preventing shady abuses of our beloved lang and community.
I think software developers just have no idea how these things work. You know that every LICENSE.txt is a "threat to sue you" by your standard?
edit: Also, you're wrong. Their goals go beyond just removal of the trademark policy.
Neither is Rust, so we're back to this being pretty stupid.