Does someone at HN have stock in groupon or something? Either way it's time for a transparent Blockchain based HN/reddit. This moderator bias crap is bs.
Problem you'll run into is that storage space isn't free. And every single miner having a mirrored copy of HN wouldn't exactly burn though storage quickly, but wouldn't exactly be a very good way to create this transparency.
It takes extraordinary amounts of willful ignorance to not find the existence of gnome.org
If their product was something marginally connected to IT I would have assumed good faith either.
If tomorrow Elon says - the new Tesla Gnome - the world's first electric sport bike, there will be no backlash.
> 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 [1], here [2] 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.
Yet Groupon says:
> We’ve been communicating with the Gnome Foundation for months to try to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, including alternative branding options, and we’re happy to continue those conversations. And if we can’t come up with a resolution, we’ll be glad to look for another name.
If we take the Gnome post as fact it appears Groupon thought they could get away with this then when they saw the (potential) backlash they backed away from their position. This may not be the case but I'm much more inclined to believe Gnome over Groupon
[0] https://www.gnome.org/groupon/
[1] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86200190%0A86200193%0A8620...
[2] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86287930%0A86287935%0A8628...
[3] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86441913%0A86441922%0A8644...
They knew it existed, but they didn't know how much of a backlash they would be. Hindsight is 20/20.
> ...said Eric Lefkofsky, CEO. "When it's complete, Gnome will serve as an operating system for merchants to run their entire operation and enable them to create real-time promotions that bring customers into their business when they need them the most."
I can understand GNOME being upset that a product described by its CEO as "an operating system" would pick their already well established name.
There should be some safeguards in the law that you cannot easily re purpose solicited donations for a cause.
If we are able to defend the mark without spending
this amount, we will use the remaining funds to
bolster and improve GNOME.
It takes incredible chutzpah (and not in a good way) to operate the way they operate. They wanted to trademark "Gnome" for a software product, and expected the GNOME project to just roll over and let it happen! It's as though no one else on the planet even exists or matters, in their estimation.
How is it that so many seemingly reputable investors are involved in this thing again? Groupon should have died on the vine six months into the story, but it didn't, and now we have to deal with their bullshit forever, I guess.
> UPDATE: After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for “Gnome.” We will choose a new name for our product going forward.
Groupon will always do the right thing... but only after everything else fails.
Considering that their <name-TBD> point-of-sale platform was largely targeted at small businesses that assumingly would follow this type of news, I am curious how long it takes for them to rebrand this product and how long they wait to roll it out... if at all.
I would have expected some reference to how crucial open source has been, and continues to be, to Groupon's ability to function as a modern internet business. Not a small omission.