Response to Nodejitsu NPM Trademark (opens in new tab)

I pledge not to use nodejitsu or have any dealings with nodejitsu employees.

There's nothing to stop them from saying "sorry", and equally nothing to stop them from doing it again. It should not have happened in the first place.

According to Mikeal he "wrote the original version of the npm registry". More of his thoughts on the history of NPM here:

https://gist.github.com/mikeal/8947417

In the trademark world you are arguing that "npm" has become "genericized" [1]. That certainly can happen, but that would be a very hard argument to make given npm's relative youth and the lack of true use as a generic. The people you link are either forking the actual npm client (in which case they are referring to it as a proper noun), or are building their own repo architecture, in which case they refer to it as an "npm registry" or "npm repository", not just "an npm".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Even without a trademark, the npm source has been Artistic License v2 for as long as I can remember, so any forks are obligated to change their name to have the right to forking the source code.

I saw it via Node Weekly. Wondered why I didn't see it on HN. Go to post the links, already posted. Strange!

There is no node foundation, "Node.js" is a Joyent's trademark. We had discussed this particular bikeshed in the mailing list last year. :)

Unfortunately, I think this is the one big issue barring Node from wide adoption. I love Node.js and the surrounding ecosystem, but all these companies fighting one another can't possibly be good for the community.

no,there is basically nodejitsu,strongloop and joyent but no Foundation. NodeJs is managed by private businesses which purpose are only to care about the interest of their shareholders, not nodejs or opensource on the node community. I guess NodeJS will be more like Nginx than Python in the way it will be managed. IE a free version + some premium services/packages... I would not rely too much on npm in the future though.

Maybe just n3?

PS: It is weird that node.js community well known for internal battles. Everybody throw shit at each other and nobody win from this.

Well, before Jason Smith started to try to monetize npm, I would have said nobody. It's open source, right?

After, well, he's the first one to do it, and it's not as though anyone else was in that space. So to me he has a better claim than Nodejitsu.

It's possible that my knowledge is incomplete though so if anyone knows better please correct my misconceptions.

I can't really see Nodejitsu's claim here. Also, why didn't nodejitsu voice their reservations over his use of npm before Jason decided to monetize the project? I feel as though either we don't know the whole story or Nodejitsu is pulling a fast one on the community.