Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl

Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by jkaplowitz on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @08:24AM (#20222621)

He may have been considering just the moral rights to fork and ship a derivative, not the confusing naming which he called out himself in the article. But indeed it's possible he doesn't care about sustaining or enforcing the curl trademark. Or he didn't know how the trademark laws can still apply without a formal registration.

And you're right, Google legal is not easy to go up against. But maybe they haven't yet been consulted on this plan and would agree with a politely but firmly worded letter from him on the naming question specifically. The original public source of these Google plans is merely an issue in the Chromium bug tracker, not yet a fully vetted blog post or press release.

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by mijoharas on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @08:35AM (#20222695)

That's a very fair point.

Though it would probably be prudent to try sending an email with "hey, do you mind changing your name to something else" first.

Then again, given the article and a bit of HN Buzz, that may already be happening.

Definitely worth you pointing out the rights that the author likely has in the comments though.

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by signal11 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @09:17AM (#20223016)

I wish Google learned from Go/Golang (i.e., where a nontrivial number of people refer to Go as Golang, much to the displeasure of some of the authors) and use names which are easy to search for.

I'm not looking forward to people mistyping libcrurl as libcurl and people having to second guess what the intention was.

curl might not be a trademark but EU has 'moral right of the author' rules. In my mind libcrurl is right up there with a search engine named G00gle or a software company named MikeRowSoft.

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by ergothus on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @10:21AM (#20223594)

Your point is very valid, but I cant even SAY it, so I havent even gotten to the typo stage.

"Crurl" is in "rural juror" territory.

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by SomeHacker44 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @11:11AM (#20224059)

"Searching for libcrurl. Click here if you really meant libcurl."

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by jkaplowitz on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @09:23AM (#20223063)

EU rules aren't the only relevant ones, either. They are certainly among the relevant ones since the curl author is in Europe, but Google has enough ties to the US that he can probably benefit from whichever set of trademark laws are more favorable. And US laws recognize unregistered trademarks too.

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by bsg75 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @01:38PM (#20225329)

> where a nontrivial number of people refer to Go as Golang

https://golang.org/

Simple names in the era of the web are not always a good idea. Also see https://www.r-project.org/

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by signal11 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @05:22PM (#20227478)

Sadly, there’s a fair amount of sniping[1] in parts of the Go community if you use “Golang” instead of “Go”.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18717303

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Re:Google to Reimplement Curl in Libcrurl by chrisfinazzo on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @10:12AM (#20223511)

For whatever reason, "alternative" languages seem to have weird naming issues.