License agreement for using the term "Hackathon"

Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by atuttle on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @06:21AM (#5667328)

I think this is a honest attempt at creating a gatekeeper for the use of the term and protect it from corporate interest. I also believe that the example of the doctape hackathon shows how this attempt does not work very well.

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by JMCQ87 on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @06:57AM (#5667421)

There's absolutely nothing that still could be called "honest" about what Lutz is doing here. He already contradicted several of his prior statements, or "lame excuses", in regards to his plans with the registration of the trademark.

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by Udo on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @06:36AM (#5667364)

So a company extorting money from anyone who uses a common phrase to organize a certain type of event is what you perceive as being a "gatekeeper for the use of the term and protect it from corporate interest"? In what kind of backwards universe does that even make sense?

In the original thread about the Hackathon trademark you advertised for Nachtausgabe's IT recruitment "branch": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650052

Are you by any chance working for them or an affiliate company?

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by atuttle on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @07:20AM (#5667482)

I think I was not clear enough: I too believe that registering the term as a trademark does no good to the developer community. But I don't think that the reasons behind this have to be some kind of extortion scheme, or that the reasoning for the trademark (http://www.young-targets.com/free-licences/) have to be completely made up. I would like to see the trademark go away, I just don't like how quickly accusations came up.

>Are you by any chance working for them or an affiliate company?

No.

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by Udo on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @07:28AM (#5667507)

> But I don't think that the reasons behind this have to be some kind of extortion scheme

Well, that is what is actually happening out there as we speak, so there is really no room for interpretation here. It's clear what their scheme is and they implemented it as quickly as they possibly could.

> I would like to see the trademark go away, I just don't like how quickly accusations came up.

That licensing extortion letter looked pretty genuine to me, so I don't think this falls under the definition of mere accusations anymore. Once again, it's what's actually happening. They were accusations when the first thread about the trademark started, but now there is actual hard evidence that our assumptions were in fact correct. And just to be sure, it would not have made any sense for that company to register the trademark if they did not have a plan exactly like this. So it's not really a surprise either.

> No.

So there is absolutely no connection? I apologize if this is true and I'm being overly cynical.

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by Mithaldu on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @06:23AM (#5667334)

They don't even have any plans for how they will distribute the money they get, and their actions contradict their own statements. I'm unclear how anything about this could be seen as honest.

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Re:License agreement for using the term "Hackathon" by th0br0 on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @06:28AM (#5667346)

Plus their parent(?!) company, http://www.nachtausgabe.de seems to be a party organiser and unrelated to the dev scene at all...

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