Using Trademark To Protect Openness?

When I read the “open letter” by Sam Johnston, I was shocked to see his attempts to trademark a very generic term like “Open Cloud”. In my opinion, there is nothing open about using a suppressive tool like trademark, on a generic term like “Open Cloud”. This is definitely not in the spirit of openness and there is absolutely no need to use a tool like trademark to protect openness. In my opinion, it is just meaningless.

Before people pounce on me with terms like traitor and what not, let me give some background about myself. I have been an evangelist for Open Source at various forums. It is my unequivocal belief that Richard Stallman is singularly responsible for bringing the idea of Openness to the consciousness of the people. However, my own beliefs in how the idea of openness should be implemented lies somewhere between RMS and Eric Raymond. I breathe openness whenever I am awake. With this justification out of the way, I want to go ahead and explain why I think Sam is wrong in his approach.

Let me start off from manifestogate. When Ruv planned the Open Cloud Manifesto with some vendors, I was very upset by the secrecy surrounding the process but I was not all that upset with the contents of the document per se. I felt that it should be done in an open manner with complete community participation in it. In my opinion, any such initiative should be open, democratic and vendor neutral. When CCIF withdrew from signing the document, I was relieved and I was looking forward to a community driven approach to define the Open Cloud. I have been following the politics surrounding the “attempts” to unleash an Open future for Cloud Computing without really jumping into the “fight”.

When I saw the post by Sam, I was startled and being an ardent evangelist of open source and open federated clouds, I feared that I will forever be condemned if I don’t speak up now. In fact, I am pretty impressed with Sam’s devotion towards Open Clouds. I am very proud of him for displaying such a passion to keep Openness to be part of the Cloud Computing ecosystem. However, his attempt to trademark the term “Open Cloud” is just naive in my opinion. It is as silly as Microsoft using such suppressive tools on the terms like “Windows” and “Office”. Anyone who has so much passion for Openness will not think of trademark as a solution to protect Openness. Trademark is the tool for proprietary software vendors. People who believe in Openness should not resort to such tools.

Rhetoric aside, we should learn from what happened in Open Source (and/or Free Software) communities in the past. Similar to what we are witnessing now in the Cloud community, after the ego clash between RMS and Eric Raymond, attempts were made by some people to trademark the term “Open Source”. Almost everyone in Free Software community and many in the Open Source community didn’t like the idea of trademarking a term as generic as “Open Source”. They felt that it is possible to stop any abuse of the term by not resorting to the use of a trademark. Finally, the efforts to trademark the term failed and we were saved from major wars in the courtrooms using the trademark. Even the attempts to trademark the term Linux was met with severe resistance from, guess who, the regulator of Intellectual Property in Australia. Well, history should teach us about how we should go about implementing Openness in Cloud Computing.

History aside, let us just take a commonsense look at the issue. Openness doesn’t imply empowering just the end users. Openness should empower both the end users and the vendors. A definition of “Openness” that benefits only one segment of the society (end users) will not go anywhere. Under such a restrictive definition and with a trademark on the term “Open Cloud”, there is absolutely no incentive for the vendors to be Open at all. Again, we need to learn from what happened in the Free Software and/or Open Source world. It is imperative that our definition of Openness empowers the end users while also embracing the vendors. If we have to do this, a route through trademark is not the correct approach. Using trademark to keep a term like “Open Cloud” to ransom by an organization is not Open at all and it is plain wrong.

When I tried to tell this to Sam on twitter, he tried to argue that the trademark is a necessary evil to keep the vendors from poaching the term “Open Cloud”. I don’t buy that. If Open Source can survive all kinds of onslaught from the vendors, including the most “powerful” Microsoft, Open Cloud will survive too. Thanks to people like RMS and others, users are now very aware about the dangers of being locked-in and the Cloud Community will not have a dinosaur like Microsoft. Let us learn from how Open Source community stopped all attempts to abuse the term Open Source and do the same in the case of Open Cloud. Let us educate the masses and make them understand that maintaining Openness is the only way they can stay empowered. Once we do that, we can stop any abuse using the power of the masses. Well, it is easier said than done but if Open Source is any example, it can be done. There is absolutely no need to resort to suppressive tools like trademark to achieve this. An Open society doesn’t need such tools of force to defend themselves. Instead of using restrictive tools to keep people on leash, let us just leave the term aside and let the mass power of the users counter any attempt by any vendor to marginalize them.

Seriously, why do some people think that they need the powers of the dark proprietary society to enforce Openness. Also, let us not get dragged into a binary fight like either you are with Ruv or you are with Sam. Let us think deeply about the consequences of a trademark on a generic term like “Open Cloud”. We all know Sam’s intentions are in good spirit. However, a single group, however democratic and independent they are, owning the trademark for a generic term like “Open Cloud” is just dangerous. Imagine such a group having a bias against the vendors. Can we really expect the vendors to keep to the spirit of Openness. Isn’t this just the reverse of what Sam accuses Ruv and his vendor friends to be doing? How can we correct one wrong with another wrong on the other side of the spectrum? A truly Open ecosystem is one where vendors play by the rules of Openness and empower the end users. With Sam’s approach, we cannot achieve this. We will, then, have disconnected vendors doing what they think as right, leaving the users in a lurch. If at all we establish Openness with participation from both vendors and users, it should be based on trust and faith on each others’ intentions and not due to the fear of draconian tools. I don’t see any difference between what Music industry is doing to users using DMCA and what Sam wants the community to do to vendors using Trademark. Let us just do it as a matter of trust and use the mass power to stop the abusers.

In short, Sam’s attempts to trademark doesn’t make any sense to me and it is not in the spirit of Openness. I have no problem lining behind Sam in his quest to achieve Openness in Cloud Computing but I cannot stand behind him if he is using tactics that are not in the true spirit of Openness.

If there is a meaningful discussion on this topic, I am more than willing to participate. If it is going to be plain name calling or bullying, I will just ignore such tactics and continue in my quest to educate users about Open Clouds and ensure Openness through a bottoms-up approach. Good Night and Good Luck.