Re: [HACKERS] Re: New Canadian nonprofit for trademark, postgresql.org domain, etc.

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Gilberto Castillo Martnez
> <gilberto(dot)castillo(at)etecsa(dot)cu> wrote:
>> This would imply improvement in the terms of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

> I wouldn't get overly optimistic about that - the purpose of this is a
> bit less "sweeping" than you may be thinking.

> The trademarks and domain names that exist are already, today, held in
> Canada, so this isn't a "move of everything to Canada."

Yes. The proposed change would have no effect whatsoever on the legal
situation of anyone who's subject to export control laws.

To my mind, there's precisely one reason for setting this up as a
Canadian non-profit rather than anything else; namely that one of the
assets Marc is offering to donate is the Canadian trademark on
"PostgreSQL", and we need a Canadian entity to own that.

(FWIW, I doubt that that trademark has any great value in itself.
But as long as it exists and is held in community hands, that will
make it much harder for someone hostile to register the name elsewhere
and then use it against the community. I wouldn't be surprised to find
the USPTO clueless enough to allow, say, Oracle to trademark the name
--- except that a trademark name search would turn up the Canadian mark,
and that would at least get them to ask some questions first.)

regards, tom lane