I just stumbled onto The Perl Camel Usage and Trademark Information and found it interesting.

IANAL nor a programmer, so would like to hear, er, read what y'all think.
    cheers,
    ybiC

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: copyrighted camel
by tye (Sage) on Sep 01, 2000 at 00:02 UTC

    It looks like a smart move to me. O'Reilly seems genuinely concerned about the community, has made a logo available for free download, and has made another logo available for free if you jump through the hoops.

    It is treading a fine line and they seem to realize this. Any restrictions are going to upset some people. If the rules of copyright weren't so clear on this, I think O'Reilly might have decided to avoid the issue.

    They have certainly done this in a much better way than I've seen most companies deal with copyright issues involving the non-commercial use by fans on the net.

    Part of me is sad to see "the lawyers" influence here. But I also tend to associate the camel more with the books than with the language.

    I wholeheartedly reject the all-too-common and simplistic argument that "they can do whatever they want because they own it". But O'Reilly appears to have done this carefully. I'd like to see them provide a wider variety of graphics (sizes, colors) to better serve the community. Perhaps this will happen as this policy matures.

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
      Tim O'Reilly is very good about details like this. He has done far more for Perl than most people realize, including giving Larry Wall free reign and investing in ActiveState to help the reunification of Windows and Unix versions of Perl.

      I have no problems with the fact that he and his company would like to protect a trademark they established which helps him sell books (and therefore helps him recoup substantial time, energy and money invested in building the community).

RE: copyrighted camel
by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 31, 2000 at 23:42 UTC
    What we all think of what? Along what axis?

    O'Reilly has the right to protect something they've made popular, and it's good for the community, since we have a symbol of "real{tm} Perl".

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

      Thanks for replying, merlyn.   You've clearly articulated my own thoughts.   My question was intended to be open-ended, that someone might mention implications that hadn't occurred to me.
          cheers,
          ybiC
RE: copyrighted camel
by davorg (Chancellor) on Sep 01, 2000 at 11:21 UTC

    Seems to me that this is all a good deal less restrictive than many of us assumed that ORA were about the usage of the Camel.

    And if I read between the lines correctly, a lot of this is down to the work that Jon Orwant has done since joining the company.

    Still, I wonder where it leaves pages like this: http://london.pm.org/camel.html :)

    --
    <http://www.dave.org.uk>

    European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London
    <http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>
(d4vis)RE: copyrighted camel
by d4vis (Chaplain) on Sep 01, 2000 at 02:06 UTC
    One level deeper is the The Perl Camel FAQ, which notes that I don't have to license (or burn) my home made perlCamel T-shirt and don't have to rewrite all the code where I used $camel as a variable.
    O'Reilly seems very cool about the usage of the trademark... which makes me far less likely to willfully violate it.

    -d4vis
    #!/usr/bin/fnord
    EDIT:
    Sorry, forgot the trailing '.html' on that link. It should work now (thanks ybiC)
RE: copyrighted camel
by turnstep (Parson) on Sep 01, 2000 at 01:00 UTC

    Quick! Someone find Joe and shove him in a broom closet! :)