[hobbit] "Hobbit" name legal stuff; slight name change will h appen

[Deiss, Mark]

Well, with everything that already has gotten leveraged under monitoring
(stock ticker, weather, California electrical power grid, etc); I expect
someone is using Hobbit to monitor books, movies, and merchandise. Which may
cause the movie lawyers to freak.

I am assuming that the lawyers would not be extending the naming issue to
the current way that the software is constructed. If it may extend to this
level, I think the H.O.B.B.I.T alternate naming convention would cause some
indigestion in the future when a Windows implementation (client and/or
server)is fielded. It may be worthwhile to have a new name convention that
is carried over into the convention used in the software itself.

I always kind of like the Big Brother name with the follow on Perl
implementation of Big Sister. How about a name to ensure a reaction from
everyone: Big Mother-In-Law (just kidding Mothers'-In-Law).

As for the comment in your other missive about your circumstances and the
mail group: it's depressing how the Big Brother project has withered away.
Mr. Croteau and Mr. MacGuire disappearing somewhere into the Quest
commercial maw. The BB support lists falling into disuse and Quest pulling
the plug on the archive list.

-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:henrik at hswn.dk] 
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:30 PM
To: hobbit at hswn.dk
Subject: [hobbit] "Hobbit" name legal stuff; slight name change will happen

Hi everyone,

some lawyers behind the movie company that produced the "Lord of the
Rings" trilogy have contacted me about using the name "Hobbit" for the
Hobbit monitor project.

Fortunately, it seems that these people are actually quite sensible.
They just want to make sure that there is no risk of anyone assuming
that the "Hobbit monitor" has anything to do with the books, movies,
merchandise etc. that they produce.

So they've suggested that beginning with the next release, "Hobbit
monitor" is renamed to either "Hobbi monitor" (without the 't'), or
"H.O.B.B.I.T. Monitor" . Or something else, but they want to know
if I pick something else.

The full correspondance can be seen at
http://www.hobbitmon.com/hobbitdocs/legal/

My current preference is to use the "H.O.B.B.I.T." version;
this is most like the current name, and it would also fit
with all of the current URL's used for various Hobbit functions (e.g.
the "hobbitmon.sf.net" project page). I'm going to write the lawyers and
get a definite OK that I can use "hobbitmon" in URL's and such;
I doubt that I can get Sourceforge to accept a project named
"h.o.b.b.i.t." since that would probably cause havoc with the DNS
entries ...

But I'd like to hear if there are other suggestions or opinions.


Regards,
Henrik


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