Quoting Bernard Rosset via Dng (dng@???):

> Thanks Rick, for this lighthearted take on this!
> Very much welcome and appreciated on my part.

Yr. very welcome.

> This actually is the "dream" of any infra person facing a relentless
> ego-bloated hijacker above in such a situation.

I was part of a Linux effort that went through this, when I was a senior
editor for the online monthly magazine Linux Gazette. Our founding
editor John M. Fisk, MD had, around issue 4, accepted a kind offer from
SSC, Inc. (at that time publishers of Linux Journal) to provide Web
hosting for the magazine. Many years later, SSC, Inc. announced without
consulting the magazine staff that it would be turning the
linuxgazette.com Web site into a continuously evolving Drupal site
without magazine issues or an editor. (SSC's newly hired webmaster just
happened to be a Drupal enthusiast.)

The magazine staff found this didn't meet the magazine's needs and moved
to new hosting the staff themselves built and paid for, at
linuxgazette.net . To our surprise, SSC, Inc. objected bitterly,
claimed to own the branding (hence, trademark) rights to Linux Gazette
(a claim I later eviscerated by checking with Dr. Fisk), and threatened
us with trademark litigation and UDRP proceedings.

Unfortunately for SSC, several members of the Gazette's staff including
me had a working knowledge of trademark and other tort law, we politely
called their bluff, and... nothing happened. Despite numerous people
telling us very emotionally that we needed to capitulate and beg for
mercy, it turned out that SSC, Inc. had no leverage and no plausible
cause of action, and merely made a lot of noise (and attempted a USPTO
trademark registration, which failed for bad drafting before we could
even file opposition[1]). The magazine continued healthily for many years,
until it finally collapsed for unrelated staff reasons.

The people on LWN.net's reader feedback forums who confidently told me,
when LWN was covering SSC's legalistic blustering, that my analysis of
SSC's position being a paper tiger was delusional on my part, that I
needed to surrender instantly, that I was only a technogeek and should
meekly give in to the demands of an actual corporation, etc., somehow
never got back to me to say I was correct and to apologise. Funny about
that.


FWIW, long ago, I wrote a mostly popular essay about the history of
forking in software projects:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html


{1] I pointed out at the time that, because Linux Gazette was a
completely non-commercial magazine, even completely valid trademark
rights, being enforceable only in commerce, would be toothless to
prevent our continuing to use our name. In addition, when I wrote to
Dr. Fisk and asked if he'd assigned any commercial rights to SSC
pursuant to the hosting offer, and he said "absolutely no", that killed
SSC's trademark-based monopoly effort stone-cold.