The purpose of using a specific name behind a project is so that people identify with that project’s identity in an effective way.

Recently there has been some developments involving SorceryNet making a fork of the charybdis IRC server implementation.  This is fine, of course, the license allows it, and they renamed it to SorIRCd as would be the standard procedure in matters like these, which is fine.

However, now they wish to add back the Charybdis string in the version output.  There are ways that this can be done where it does not infringe on our rights as holder of the charybdis name.  But no…

Here is how they intend to set their version string:

SorIRCd-3.0.0(3.0.0-3-ga71dc30)-Charybdis3.2

In and of itself, this is mostly OK, but it raises some questions about Charybdis: What is charybdis? Is it a patchset to SorIRCd? The fact that the second question is raised makes it an obvious infringement.

This leaves me somewhat concerned as there is an obvious infringement of the charybdis name going on, and it may result in actual confusion.  Since the coder is an Anope developer, maybe I ought to just tack on -Anope2.0 to the end of Atheme’s version string and see what they say about it.  Maybe they will get my point then…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 14th, 2010 at 12:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.