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Message from discussion Moodle cease and desist.
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Tony Whitmore  
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  More options 21 Jun 2006, 22:44
From: Tony Whitmore <schoolfo...@tonywhitmore.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:44:12 +0100
Local: Wed 21 Jun 2006 22:44
Subject: Re: [sf-uk-discuss] Re: Moodle cease and desist.
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John Ingleby wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-06-21 at 18:46 +0100, Tony Whitmore wrote:
> {-snip-]
>> Being unable to list the software you're prepared to support on your
>> website with coughing up a fee sounds incredibly backward to me.
>> Personally I would resent any project that tried to take away my freedom
>> in this way.
> I agree with Tom, David Goodwin's post gave no details, and in
> particular none regarding any reasons given (or not) for asking his
> friend to stop using the name Moodle.

I've now seen the e-mail that was sent. The "site" in question was
actually just a blog posting that had the text "Moodle services" in it!
The C&D letter is basically just a form letter and I half suspect it was
sent by an automated system that searches pages for certain strings.

To quote the e-mail:
"It’s come to our attention that your site is using our Moodle trademark
without permission. "Moodle" is legally trademarked to describe Moodle
commercial services, as that is something that only official Moodle
Partners are permitted to do.
http://moodle.com/partners/
Please remove all references to Moodle services, Moodle hosting, Moodle
training, Moodle consulting, Moodle installation, and other such terms
from your website immediately and let us know when it’s done."

Whilst I don't doubt that they have the legal right to do this (and am
aware of similar enforcement of the Linux trademark in some countries),
it still seems to reduce the Freedom of the Moodle software. Many
web-based Free Software projects are offered as part of hosting packages
and I'm not aware of any other project requiring registration (even for
no money) in order to use the software name. Indeed, such a requirement
would be against the GPL.

The other option is that people rebrand the software, as has been
suggested. So then people end up using Moodle under a different name
without any of the recognition going to the Moodle project and without
raising the profile of Moodle.

Tony


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