Snippet: Groupon vs. GNOME ☇

GNOME (via Thord D. Hedengren):

Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation.” The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation.

Even if you compete with an open source product, it’s just considered poor form to use established product names and terminology just because some groups can’t defend themselves. In the case of Groupon, it’s not a competitor, but the use case is close enough that it feels like a scumbag move.

Update: Groupon is abandoning its trademark applications for the name “Gnome” and looking for a new name.