KDE Apps name trademarks

[Ben Cooksley]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 9:28 AM Filipe Saraiva <filipe at kde.org> wrote:
>
> Em 20/07/2020 07:55, Albert Vaca Cintora escreveu:
> >
> > I think we should be happy there are packagers that distribute our
> > software on Windows, the same way we are happy there are packages
> > distributing our software on Linux distros.
> >
>
> The problem is not people packing and distributing our software,
> including selling them.
>
> The problem is people using the original name of our software in an
> environment where we could for ourselves pack and distribute them. If I
> am not wrong, apps stores don't allow a same software using a same name
> but distributed by different "owners".

This depends on the store in question.

The Microsoft Store does not require that software be named uniquely
from my understanding.

Apple also does not have that requirement, but they do require that
applications have a unique identifier (which are constructed in the
form of reverse dns names, which would be org.kde.$applicationname for
most of our applications)

I believe Android works similarly to Apple, using a unique reverse dns
name to identify an application (and tying ownership of that name to a
specific certificate rather than an account on their services)

>
> If it is the case, we will be in a scenario where we can not use the
> original name of our software to distribute them.
>
> It is a very different scenario of a Linux distro repository where we
> are not going to pack our software and compete to distro packagers.
>
> --
> Filipe Saraiva
> http://filipesaraiva.info/
>

Cheers,
Ben