Comment by testdelacc1

Comment by testdelacc1 3 days ago

But he isn’t. He’s just writing an AI slop book about Zig. Surely there’s nothing legally wrong with that? He never said it’s an official book or backed by the Zig project.

The trademark cudgel is used on people who release an incompatible language that they insist on calling Zig, confusing people who want to try Zig. Or people who add malware to the Zig tool chain and try to distribute that.

Trademark can’t be used to control bad actors like zigbook.

lenkite 3 days ago

> Surely there’s nothing legally wrong with that?

Incorrect. Not honoring the attribution requirement in the MIT license is a copyright infringement because it violates the terms of the license, which are legally enforceable conditions.

Reply View 2 replies

testdelacc1 3 days ago

We are specifically talking about what the Zig project/foundation headed by Andy Kelley can do to such bad actors using the Zig trademark - which is exactly nothing.
I wouldn't be so quick with the "incorrect" if I were you. You haven't even taken the trouble to read two sentences.

Reply View | 1 reply
- lenkite 3 days ago
  
  > I wouldn't be so quick with the "incorrect" if I were you. You haven't even taken the trouble to read two sentences.
  I wouldn't be so quick with the dismissal if I were you. You haven't even taken the trouble to read the article.
  Also, Quad erat demonstrandum - the infringing repo no longer exists.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies

pa7ch 3 days ago

Mm thats a good point. I'm not entirely clear on the limits of trademarks in this case. Its Zigbook rather then Zig.

Reply View 1 reply

testdelacc1 3 days ago

I read a lot about this when Rust was considering adopting a trademark policy. The main use cases for enforcing the trademark were
- preventing someone who hardforked the project from creating an incompatible language while using the same name.
- preventing someone from distributing malware while still using the same name.
Because if you notice, neither of these clash with the MIT license that many languages use. You need to enforce your trademark to stop this kind of behaviour.
Zigbook can argue that they aren’t causing any confusion between themselves and the Zig language. The Zig foundation could argue that the name implies an endorsement by the project and they should call themselves The Unofficial Zig Book instead. I don’t know which way it goes.

Reply View | 0 replies