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Comment by ByteAtATime | Hacker News Reader

Fair point! I've actually thought about that before; I've tried to be extremely clear in the project's README with a disclaimer that this is a non-commercial hobby project and is not affiliated with the official Raycast team in any way.

The name is just for identification, as the project's goal is to be a compatible, open-source alternative for the Linux community, a platform they don't currently serve.

That being said, I'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks for bringing it up!

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That shouldn't matter. They might even have a Linux version in the works, given they are doing Windows now. They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it. You also seem to be using their brand assets like the logo. I get your intention and love what you were able to accomplish but if you intend for this to grow, you are better off doing this now.

That makes sense -- I'll go figure something out, thanks for the explanation!

> They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it.

Only the logo and name. The functionality side should be perfectly fine, there are oodles of precedent for reversing a workable program from someone's commercial API: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

But prolly can still go after if you resemble it closely enough in terms of looks? I get the API point though, thanks.

Eh, probably not. There are any number of things that look like it. The appearance is the natural outcome of its functionality.

True, but a cease & desist will likely include the demand that they cease all operations, and they might be willing to fight that in court, possibly seek damages, etc however likely or unlikely it is that it would hold up. They can pay for a few hours of a lawyer's time to intimidate the OP.

It should matter that it's a non-commercial hobby project. It's nice to see the light pushback.

They use react-native, no? One of the main issues is that all react-native implementations are half baked and dead.

The launcher UI is AppKit while the extension APIs allow third-party developers to write them in TS and a React subset. They have a custom renderer for React that turns that into AppKit primatives. So similar in concept but custom and specific to their usecase.

“Just for identification” is the point — the name Raycast identifies their product, and it’s their trademark. You can’t use it without permission, even with a disclaimer in the readme.

> The name is just for identification

That’s precisely what they’d dislike about it. You’d be creating “brand confusion” by using their trademark in your own name. You couldn’t make “My Cola (Recreating Coke)” without getting an expensive and inconvenient letter from their legal team.

It's worse than that -- "Recreating Raycast" is just the blog post title, the project is called "raycast-linux".

Oh dear. Yeah, that’s guaranteed to end badly.

OP: please do change this ASAP so that the Raycast gang doesn’t protest the really neat project you’ve made!

It's also worse than that. It uses the Raycast logo directly in the launcher itself. Which is odd because just above this, OP says:

"I've actually thought about that before; I've tried to be extremely clear in the project's README with a disclaimer that this is a non-commercial hobby project and is not affiliated with the official Raycast team in any way."

Clearly a bright kid, but that's quite a fumble. Among my ideas for being extremely clear about not being affiliated with Raycast I would have to say using their name and using their logo together would be the worst way to communicate that.

I've had to look into for my own side projects, you don't want to include brand names, trademarks, etc in your own projects' names and you should be very wary about how you use them in your marketing if you choose to do so at all.

I propose cast-a-ray (sounds like castaway and goes along with FOSS wink+tonge-in-cheek style). Or maybe waycast?

I'm sorry, but in my accent (speech impairment?) "cast-a-ray" sounds almost like "castrate", so I can't back your naming idea. :P

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