[openbeos] Re: Name suggestion

> I would take the above to mean one should stay away from Be name
> completely.
> 
> Call it anything but Be, but also add, formerly known as openbeos, that
> way you still capitalize on their name (which is why people want to put Be
> in the name, and this is illegal), but you won't be sued b/c if they send
> a cease and desist letter, you drop the latter part of the name, but you
> still have a name that's not legally dangerous to you. You won't get sued
> as 'formerly known as openbeos' is just a comment, not a name. :)

If Lindows wins their case, what are the chances that Palm will sue us for
using Be in the name?

MS is a convicted monopolist, and Lindows is treading on their
marketshare.  There is very little utility gained by Palm investing
lawyers in suing us, especially given that the economy is bad, and palm is
losing marketshare to MS.

If anything if OpenBeOS succeeds, we will be challenging MS on another
front and helping out Palm (in a strange way).  So what incentive do they
have to press the trademark (except if they plan on releasing something
else called "BeOS" on the handheld or desktop market.

nobody ever sued GNU for using "unix" in their name.

It would be a risk going behind palm's back like that, of course, we
should ask what we have to gain by keeping the "Be" moniker (actually, I
have an allegiance to the name "Be", since I found the beos one day when I
was bored and surfing the web -www.be.com).  I don't think there's ever
been a better OS name than BeOS -- except if we called ourselves

"The OS"

Isaac

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