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Moodle cease and desist.
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Message-ID: <44997EC9.5020902@st-ives.surrey.sch.uk>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:15:53 +0100
From: Miles Berry <mbe...@st-ives.surrey.sch.uk>
Organization: St Ives School, Haslemere
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To: sf-uk-discuss@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [sf-uk-discuss] Moodle cease and desist.
References: <44997237.9050607@tonywhitmore.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <44997237.9050607@tonywhitmore.co.uk>
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Tony Whitmore wrote:
> David Goodwin of WolvesLUG, Pale Purple etc. made a blog post containing
> a worrying story about Moodle:
>
> "A friend received a cease and desist letter from someone at moodle.com
> moaning about his use of 'Moodle Services', 'Moodle hosting', 'Moodle
> training', 'Moodle Consulting' and 'Moodle installation'. It appears
> they have a wide ranging trademark. While I understand there is a
> benefit to having commercial 'Moodle partners', Moodle has it's roots in
> the open source community - it seems rather short termed and defeating
> to restrict the online visibility of Moodle related resources."
>
> The full post is at: http://www.codepoets.co.uk/node/193
>
> I know that the idea of Moodle partners has been discussed here before,
> but such behaviour really does seem to restrict the ability of companies
> to use Moodle on their website (and hence search engines won't pick them
> up). Yes, I'm aware of the need to protect a Trademark to keep it valid,
> but still...
>
> Tony
There's nothing stopping people using Moodle code on their websites.
There's nothing to stop them making money out of Moodle.
They can in fact take the whole of the Moodle code and sell this under
whatever name they choose, other than "Moodle", subject to the terms of
the GPL.
The trademark is Moodle's way of maintaining some quality standards for
those providing commercial Moodle services under that name, as well as
generating some revenue stream for the core developers themselves.
Most of the folk who get one of these cease and desist letters are are,
I suspect, interested in using the high profile "Moodle" brand for their
commercial advantage, rather than contributing to the ongoing
development efforts, either directly or through financial support.
Miles.
>
> >
>
>
--
Miles Berry
Deputy Head, St Ives School, Haslemere
http://stiveshaslemere.com
http://elgg.net/mberry/weblog
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