Mailing List Archive

Erwin Rol wrote:

> Can I conclude from that that is was just a personal "fight" between
> Gerald and NSI that made him decide to move.

>From everything I've heard from Gerald, no, that's not what made him
decide to move. I'll let him give more details if he wants to.

> Maybe there should be looked at a way to make
> "wireshark" more independent from problems like that.

The "Wireshark" trademark is, for better or worse, owned by CACE.

I don't know how much it costs to file for a trademark, so I don't know
how practical it would have been for Gerald, or for the
Ethereal/Wireshark/whatever community, to do so.


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It was not even clear to me, from the initial announcement, *which*
project had been renamed to Wireshark: Ethereal, or WinPcap?

The whole thing seems abrupt, opaque, and not a little scary.

- --
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mwood@IUPUI.Edu
Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he
means the exact opposite.

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On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 02:40 -0700, Guy Harris wrote:
> Erwin Rol wrote:
>
> > Can I conclude from that that is was just a personal "fight" between
> > Gerald and NSI that made him decide to move.
>
> >From everything I've heard from Gerald, no, that's not what made him
> decide to move. I'll let him give more details if he wants to.
>
> > Maybe there should be looked at a way to make
> > "wireshark" more independent from problems like that.
>
> The "Wireshark" trademark is, for better or worse, owned by CACE.
>
> I don't know how much it costs to file for a trademark, so I don't know
> how practical it would have been for Gerald, or for the
> Ethereal/Wireshark/whatever community, to do so.

So it is just a matter of time until this drama is going to be repeated,
namely when Gerald leaves CACE and again loses all rights to the project
name. At least I hope that the community will be informed before the
change happens and not after it.

- Erwin


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On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, ronnie sahlberg wrote:
> Do not attack Gerald for the situation. Sometimes situations arise
> that are outside your control.

Understood. Gerald was stuck with this too, apparently. Fair enough --
something had to be done.

> For that matter, Gerald has put in a
> very significant amount of hard work building the new website and make
> sure everything is ready and up and running and so that the transition
> for everyone should be as easy as possible. That all services, wiki,
> buildbots, nightly-builds, bugzilla etc are available from day one on
> the new site. Rebuilding the new website is an immense amount of work
> and was NOT just click a button and the magic happens.
> Gerald put an immense amount of work to make this transition as easy
> and painless as possible for everyone.

As much as I appreciate that, I must note that, when my bank was bought
out, the new owners did the same thing. From the customer's perspective,
everything was done in secret and we were kept ignorant of every change
until it was completed. Far from feeling well-cared-for, I felt
frightened, disgusted, and insulted by turns. The takeover soured my
entire relationship with the new bank. I was pleased to hear that they
had in turn been bought, and more pleased with the open manner in which
the next owners carried out the same process, with plenty of detailed
advance notice as the schedule progressed.

I think that some are not so much upset by the changes themselves as by
being so thoroughly surprised.

- --
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mwood@IUPUI.Edu
Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he
means the exact opposite.

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Hello!


Dare I hope that with the renaissance of the project there'll finally be an
interesting IRC channel associated to it?

I know there's already a very active mailing list for the project - and that's
great - but I believe a dedicated IRC channel would be very useful for people
involved in Ethereal (or in similar projects) to interactively discuss
matters that are not necessarily related to Ethe^H^H^H^HWireshark but that
could turn out to be of interest to most of them anyway, such as high-speed
packet capture, scalable protocol dissection, privilege separation, and
whatnot. Personally I find it increasingly difficult to find people with whom
I can exchange ideas, and I figured I mustn't be the only one.

Now I'm not asking for the creation of such an IRC channel: #ethereal has been
around for a long time on irc.freenode.net, but (except for the one time when
I had the great pleasure of chatting with Gerald Combs himself \o/ ) so far
it's only been me and Ober Heim (who's contributed to Ethereal in the past)
and the usual bunch of driveby users with questions as clueless as "Can I use
Ethereal to capture packets on my network?".

I am asking that core-developers and non-core-developers ("those that only
help with pity little things" as Erwin apparently likes to call them :) ) and
hardcore-ethereal-users (those whose work imply using it on a daily basis)
PLEASE join the #wireshark channel on Freenode that Joerg Mayer created upon
the name change announcement, and STAY there. Nobody's expected to talk all
the time, since of course none of us has the time to, but if everybody gives
a look once in a while to his IRC client running somewhere in the background
and perhaps replies to a line posted no-matter-how-long ago, it will bring a
little liveliness to the channel...

To Gerald in particular (I guess): it would also help if the existence of an
IRC channel for the project was explicitly mentioned on the website (instead
of deep down the FAQ), preferably in the Development section rather than the
Support one (cause we don't want mass arrivals of people that ask questions
about what Ethereal can do before even downloading and trying it).

Also, please note that last time somebody mentioned on this mailing list the
existence of #ethereal, it was in September 2005 and in those terms:

> there has recently been an upswing in activity on the #ethereal channel
> on irc.freenode.net including an actual conversation! It would be nice
> to have more participation. If you're interested, drop by.

How sad.


Regards,

--
Sébastien Raveau
Security Engineer for the French Government

A lot of questions have been flying around about the name change. I'll
try to answer them in this message and the next. If I missed one,
please let me know.

Why the name change?

JohnR's synopsys is essentially correct. Several years ago, my former
employer (NIS) registered trademarks for the Ethereal name and logo. At
the time this provided valuable legal protection for the project.
Unfortunately, when I left we weren't able to come to an agreement on
the trademarks and they stayed behind.

There are several details about this that I can't discuss, but I will
say this: There was no "fight" between NIS and I. Although I'm deeply
disappointed about the trademarks, I understand their decision. NIS is
a great company and I still hold everyone there in high regard.

My reason to leave had more to do with the opportunities available at
CACE (for the project, my family, and myself) than anything. The "good
stuff" that will come from moving to CACE will far outstrip any "bad
stuff" from the name change.


What will happen to Ethereal and ethereal.com? What about the mailing
lists, bug tracker, etc.? Will an announcement be posted on the site?

Dunno. That's up to my former employer.


Why wasn't there a discussion about the name change?

The name change wasn't discussed in public because that's a really,
really dumb thing to do. Google for "openssh domain" for one example,
but there are plenty of others. I've tried to make the project as open
as possible, but there are some things that simply can't be discussed in
public.


Why was the name change kept secret for so long?

I wasn't sure we had to change names until about two weeks ago. At that
time the choice fell down to announcing the change immediately (with
zero content on the Wireshark site) and getting some sort of minimal
infrastructure in place. I chose the latter, which included a web site,
mailing lists, bug tracker, SVN repository, and a downloadable
prerelease. Getting everything set up took a little longer than
expected. Ultimately, it was my decistion, so if you don't like it,
blame me.


Finally, please don't dismiss my respect (and awe at various times) for
the Wireshark/Ethereal developer and user community. I've been busting
my ass for the last couple of weeks to ensure that we have the same (or
better) support infrastructure under Wireshark that we did under
Ethereal, and will continue to do so.

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I'm singling this question out due to its significance:

What happens if Gerald leaves CACE / gets hit by a bus / is bludgeoned
to death by Erwin Rol? Specifically, what happens to the Wireshark
trademark?

I'll quit the project before we change the name again. There's no way
I'm going through this crap a second time. The trademark registrations
are in progress. They'll initally be owned by me.

I'd like opinions from the community about where we should proceed after
that. If you're comfortable with me holding the trademarks, I'd be
proud to do so. If you'd rather see an organization formed to ensure
the continued success of the project, I'd be happy about that too. If
you have any other (realistic, constructive) suggestions, please send them.

[. BTW, why aren't there more umbrella organizations for open source like
the ASF? In particular, why isn't there an umbrella organization for
open source networking software? ]
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On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 18:17 -0500, Gerald Combs wrote:
> I'm singling this question out due to its significance:
>
> What happens if Gerald leaves CACE / gets hit by a bus / is bludgeoned
> to death by Erwin Rol? Specifically, what happens to the Wireshark
> trademark?

Hey I am not that violent, unless yer a German football supporter and we
(Holland) lose again from Germany in the final of the world
championship ;-)

> I'll quit the project before we change the name again. There's no way
> I'm going through this crap a second time. The trademark registrations
> are in progress. They'll initally be owned by me.
>
> I'd like opinions from the community about where we should proceed after
> that. If you're comfortable with me holding the trademarks, I'd be
> proud to do so. If you'd rather see an organization formed to ensure
> the continued success of the project, I'd be happy about that too. If
> you have any other (realistic, constructive) suggestions, please send them.

I think there are a few options, but they all have disadvantages too.

1) You could hold the trademark, just like Linus holds the Linux
trademark.
2) Some Wireshark foundation could be founded and they could hold the
trademark.
3) Some existing foundation could be found.

Solution one has the disadvantage that Gerald can do what he wants with
the trademark including selling it to Microsoft or anybody else ;-) And
that he will have to cough up all the cost himself, or at least find
funding himself, cause the world is bigger than the US, look what
happened to the Linux trademark in other countries. Of course the pro
side is that it is easy, Gerald registers the mark and we are done.

Solution 2, has the disadvantage that a foundation has to be founded,
and several people have to lead that foundation. So it will be extra
work and when it is just for a trademark it seems a bit of a over kill.
If it also will do other things like pay for the webhosting, and
organize computer fair stands, bit like the gnome, kde, blender
foundations it might be a good long term goal. Advantage is also that
not one single person can decide what happens to the trademark and to
Wireshark in general.

Solution 3 has the advantage it is simple. the disadvantage is that I
wouldn't know what foundation would be good for Wireshark, FSF ? ASF ?
OSL ? GNOME ? And even if one is found, will it have the best interests
for Wireshark ? cause it will be unlikely that one of the Wireshark
developers will directly get a position in the board of a existing
foundation.

> [. BTW, why aren't there more umbrella organizations for open source like
> the ASF? In particular, why isn't there an umbrella organization for
> open source networking software? ]

Well maybe it is time to create one ? What other projects are there that
would benefit from a Open Network Software Foundation?

Personally I would suggest to let Gerald have the trademark for now
until all the dust settles, and than maybe in a year or so look around
if it is possible to start a foundation for the Wireshark project (and
maybe other network software based projects). And if starting a
foundation is not possible, just let Gerald have it, in the end the only
thing that can be taken away is the name and not the GPLed software
(that is why GPL software is a good thing!).

- Erwin



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Hi guys,

This has now hit lwn.net, so expect slashdot in short while ;-)

--
Andreas Sikkema
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Actually it boils down to this:

The trademark must be held and defended (registered or not) by some
going concern. Some benevolent private enterprise is certainly a
workable solution.

It doesn't need to be 100% ownership. There may be a buyout clause or
a perpetual license for Gerald to use the name for whatever project he
likes. If the business is really nice they may offer to defend the
name while leaving actual ownership with Gerald as long as he works
for them.

But it has to be some organization that has sufficient funds and will
to defend the trademark in a lawsuit.

It could be a private business, individual, or non-profit. Keep in
mind though, a NP must still make money. So there must be a business
model.

Plus, this company http://www.wireshark.com must be unwilling to
defend their mark, or the two organizations could share it, in the way
that there is no apparently no confusion between Apple Computer and
Apple Records. Although the company doesn't have the word TM all over
the page they've been using it so it's a trademark.

-- John.
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On Saturday 10 June 2006 00:24 am, Andreas Sikkema wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> This has now hit lwn.net, so expect slashdot in short while ;-)
No extra charge :-)

I think it is worth explaining to target users what the real change is, and
why it is occurring.

Gerald: how do you feel about an "interview" on this? Anyone else who would be
willing to be involved / quoted?

Brad

On 6/7/06, John R. <jhoger@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Interesting. From the actual Wireshark FAQ:
>
> > Q 1.2: What's up with the name change? Is Wireshark a fork?
> >
> > A: In May of 2006, the original author of Ethereal(r) went to work for
> CACE Technologies (best known for WinPcap). At that time he started the
> Wireshark open-source project.
> >
> > Wireshark is almost (but not quite) a fork. Normally a "fork" of an open
> source project results in two names, web sites, development teams, support
> infrastructures, etc. This is the case with Wireshark except for one notable
> exception -- every member of the core development team is now working on
> Wireshark.


I'm perhaps a tad late on this, but one comment here: Should this item in
the FAQ be modified to talk about the problems with the Ethereal mark, etc?
The reason for the name change, site move, etc is not "because Gerald
changed jobs" alone, and anyone reading this is likely to be just as
confused about the situation as most people seemed to be when this was first
announced on the lists.