Also I cannot comment on the letters you got from Apache, having never read them. BUt for sure I’ve never heard of ASF lawyers acting as attack dogs against everyone who dares to misuse the Apache brand, regardless of the reasons why such brand is used in the first place.

How was I disingenuous? I have not defended the letters. The letters were a mistake, and an obnoxious one at that. I’m furious about them, as is everyone else at JBoss. They were done by someone in the legal department at Red Hat without the knowledge of anyone in the JBoss division and AFAICT without the knowledge of Mark Webbink. If you think you are angry about this issue, you have not seen my internal emails.

So, we’re working on clarifying the whole issue and making a very clear statement about it on our website. Obviously this takes time. I only learned about this issue on *Wednesday*, for chrissakes, and I have been on the road since then.

What we have done is say that this was mistake, and we do not expect it to happen again. I’m not sure what else I can do until we get to sit down with the lawyers and figure out how to craft a more accurate statement.

But, OTOH, other people (eg. Rickard and Bill Dudney) are trying to claim that merely owning a trademark is somehow wrong and shows us to be somehow different from other opensource groups. I’m pointing out that other groups also own and defend their trademarks. And yes, we have got letters from Apache telling us what we can and can’t do with the Tomcat brand. I do not see how it is disingenuous to point this out.

I use a completely different Open Source product which I am a massive fan of but which has recently been sending similar sorts of letters to companies providing training and support.

I not only think it is legally dubious, I don’t think it’s particularly good for the continuing health of the community to be excluding people who are able to actually make a living from their knowledge of the product. It affects those offering services directly, but it affects me too if it damages the commity or diminishes the momentum of a product I use.

However, as you can see in this case, the legal issues are clouded in most people’s minds (more so when considering differing jurisdictions across the globe) so the discussions are generally highly unproductive.

I don’t suppose the Free Software Foundation or someone similar has published (or could be encouraged to publish) a proper legal opinion on this?