On 06/13/12 12:37 AM, rjf wrote:
1. You are not protected from lawsuits simply by changing the name.
You might decrease the likelihood that the lawsuit will succeed against
you.
You must *dramatically* reduce the likelihood of anyone starting a lawsuit too.
2. I agree that SAGE was not a wise choice because there were other
computer systems with that name that immediately came to mind.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environment
and a wikipedia search and a trademark search should have been done.
The Semi Automatic Ground System is probably less of an issue than the accounts
package, which I would have thought the biggest threat.
3. To add to the criteria, should you choose another name, let me
suggest that you pick something unusual.
Agreed. Personally I'd have "math" in there somewhere, but be very careful not
to make it too much like Mathematica. If a name was proposed, that had the word
Math in it, to save any possible future issues, it might be worth asking Wolfram
Research if they have any objections, and if so on what basis.
As you possibly remember, I have asked them before about using WolframAlpha for
Sage testing, and documenting the results in the Sage code. They were ok with
that, as long as we were not making automated requests to their web site.
Here's one suggestion.
Mathxy
'x' and 'y' are used a lot in maths, the name is nothing like anything else, yet
it has "math" in it, which would be an advantage in my opinion.
4. FYI, someone decided to use the name MockMMA again,
sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/mockmma/
and even used some of my code.
His project is, in most respects, an uninteresting
superficial gloss over Maxima code
trying to use a very small subset of the Mathematica syntax.
It nevertheless has re-used the MockMMA name, and registered
it in sourceforge.
I suspect if you took it up with sourceforge, they might well make him remove
it. But you can be sure if I tried to register Mathematica, WRI would soon be
after me, and sourceforge would certainly remove it.
But lets be honest, you used the name MockMMA as a **** take of Mathematica,
given MMA was the short name for Mathematica. (In fact, rather annoyingly, if
you type mma in Mathematica, it converts it to Mathematica!) But that was your
choice. You got the inevitable results.
But if Sage developers want to avoid problems, changing the name to something
else would be a good idea.
I am not a lawyer..
Me neither. But we can both use our common sense, and can both see Sage was not
a good name to pick. I thought it first time I came across the project, and my
opinion on that has never changed.
RJF
PS, I see from your biography, you have the amateur radio (ham) callsign of
KJ6BIH. I'm G8WRB here.
Dave
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