There was never any legal threat, in fact I try to clarify that repeatedly. The user kept steering it to a poor understanding of trademark law and then publicly uploaded documents with a physical address in response.
This user has been repeatedly disruptive in the subreddit and Slack before this incident, and then they go and publicly doxx someone? There is zero tolerance for that behavior.
Yes, if they were perfectly fine with using that address in public records they should understand that it will be searchable, tying the business to that address.
There are tons of cheap services[1] to provide obfuscated business addresses for LLCs very cheaply, and by the time you're navigating filing documentation for legal trademarks I would expect this to be a known solution, as their legal counsel should've brought it up when they were establishing the LLC in the first place.
Diluting a brand and trademark is something that can and does happen and does not imply a threat whatsoever. I clarified that multiple times.
And uploading legal filings with private addresses in them and publicly associating with a GitHub user account in response to me opening a GitHub issue is absolutely doxxing. It was not necessary at all, and they refuse to remove it.
The only address I see is the one for an LLC, which is also a public address?
If you mean the email address, it's just your first name and your company, which is the same name you're using for HN and Github? How are they not already publicly associated?
Please, just "mea culpa" that you got off on the wrong foot here, unban the guy, and work out this situation slowly over time. The repo has only 2 stars!
Your ridiculous overreaction is what makes me never want to touch Elementary. I don't want to make this about me, but I'm in your customer profile, typing this on a System76 laptop and having a PineBook Pro sitting next to me. I want to pay OSS companies for quality work! You should really think about what you're doing here and what kind of reputation you want your company to have amongst your potential customers.
This is one of your comment from the Github thread,
> ...which affords certain protections under US trademark law and has enabled elementary to prevent people from distributing other items under our brand name—but regardless this issue is in no way a legal threat as much as you want to insinuate...
Honesty, it looks like a legal threat to me despite claiming otherwise given your other comments on the Github thread have been on the legality of your request.
Also, claiming the repo owner has a poor understanding of trademark law when you are not a lawyer reflects poorly on you. If you wanted to change their name to "Unofficial elementaryOS Tweaks" - just ask nicely without getting into legal gobbledygook.
That's actually the edited version, the original one stated:
> ...which affords certain protections under US trademark law and has enabled elementary to prevent people from distributing other items under our brand name—but I absolutely do not want to go the legal threat route
Which is much more of an "it'd be a shame if something happened" kind of phrasing.
Yeah, but it also clearly states that they don't want to go the legal threat route. So I don't know. I think that thsi think was clearly mishandled by both sides
The user (who appears to have posted this link, btw, based on recent post history) has been disruptive in the subreddit and Slack in the past, and then literally started publicly doxxing _and_ going around to social media to draw public attention to the post. I messaged them on Slack and they ignored it, continued to post in the thread, and continued posting on social media to draw attention to it. There's zero tolerance for doxxing in the elementary community, so they've been banned in accordance to the elementary Code of Conduct.
The Slack/reddit ban and the grotesque doxxing accusations are exactly why these conversations must happen in the open. Your histrionic replies to both the GitHub issue and the comments here are just further proofs for me that I should never touch anything elementaryos related.
You failed epically and instead of issuing a mea culpa you just doubled down for the whole world to see.
Actually, it's you who doxxed yourself when you choose to use your residential address for a LLC. They just shared a searchable, public domain document.
You are in the right if that's all true. But the fact that you are banning him/her right when there is a ongoing disagreement makes me question the validity of your claim.
They uploaded documents with my personal information in them when it was not even necessary to discuss the issue. They refuse to remove the documents at my request. They continue to draw attention to the post on social media. That's absolutely ban-worthy behavior.
Yes, still experimental. We recently merged in the ability to cross-compile Flatpak apps across x86 and ARM, so hopefully that leads to a more official status soon.
They support MBOX exports and have expressed that they will support custom domains. Between the two, it’s hardly lock-in; you can export as often as you like and keep your address.
Yes, because elementary OS is not Ubuntu. In the past, we carried newer versions of GTK or other core libraries, so pretending to be Ubuntu would actually do more harm than good.
However, we have added an `--upstream` or `-u` flag to lsb_release like other Linux-based OSes to point to an upstream release if the downstream release is not supported. I believe this has been adopted for installers of tools like Ruby and Node.
For what it's worth, elementary does not create Epiphany; that's the GNOME browser and is largely a GUI wrapper around WebKit, the exact same engine as in Safari.
AppCenter is a way to serve the app developers who were already attempting to target the OS while also enabling both them and elementary to cover (some) costs.
You realize elementary has created the entire Pantheon desktop environment, right? So, "It's just their desktop environment with their stylesheet, their apps, and the AppCenter ecosystem," is basically what you are saying. In which case, yeah, that's exactly what elementary OS is.
For what it's worth, that was my personal response and not anything official or reviewed by System76 "the company." I try to retain a bit of autonomy while working for Sytem76.
I agree that my tone may have been a little unprofessional itself, and that's on me. It has just been a frustrating time trying to do what's best for both our customers and the Linux ecosystem at large, and then being raked across the coals for it with a misleading and seemingly emotional blog post from a core Red Hat desktop employee and high-profile GNOME contributor. It's just not a fun thing to wake up to when you're also actively working with the guy on his other projects and contributing to GNOME itself, you know?
We all get frustrated, I get it. I've found a good rule of thumb for those types of situations is thinking about how the post would look if you said "I work at $COMPANY and directly represent them". Even if you don't include that copy in your posts (which larger companies enforce, see the typical "I work at X" disclaimers all over HN), it helps frame how your post may be interpreted.
Just curious, what laptop do you have? I'm always open to hearing constructive criticism like this, and it's something we've been more aggressively addressing with recent products. But I'd love to know which product it is so I can share that feedback with our team.
It's a gazelle, 4 core, 16GB, purchased just short of two years ago. Since you asked for feedback I'll be more specific: the touchpad plastic cover curls up at the front and has a sharp edge, the buttons are very thin, don't sit evenly, and have a very mushy feel. The keyboard is also mushy and has very poor feel. The joinery on the case is poor with unfinished sharp edges. The case/chassis itself is not stiff, flexes slightly and creaks when you pick it up one-handed for example. I use the laptop over vnc these days from another machine with monitors/keyboard/mouse so the issues don't affect me much, and performance wise I'm rather happy with it. Fwiw.
