As the AsciiDoc language specification gets underway under the umbrella of the AsciiDoc Working Group, I'm curious to know how the process for protecting the trademark works (in this case, AsciiDoc). One of the main reasons we chose the Eclipse Foundation to host the specification is to prevent the AsciiDoc name from being used in ways that dilute its meaning.
To cite a concrete example, we received the following announcement on the AsciiDoc WG list about a new project named asciidoc-hs that aims to develop a new processor for AsciiDoc. Here's that message:
https://www.eclipse.org/lists/asciidoc-wg/msg00110.htmlI want to state right up front that we in no way want to discourage this effort. The goal of the AsciiDoc WG is to encourage the creation of multiple implementations. However, right now, there's no official spec or TCK in place for the AsciiDoc language, so it's not possible for a library to claim it parses AsciiDoc (apart from grandfathered projects like Asciidoctor and AsciiDoc Python). And since the project cannot yet self-certify as compliant, our understanding is that the trademark "asciidoc" cannot be used in the name.
What's the process for handling this situation? Will the Eclipse Foundation help with situations like this? How serious is the Eclipse Foundation about protecting its trademarks? How do we communicate with the project maintainer(s) that the AsciiDoc name cannot be used until the software is compliant with the spec (which depends on the existence of a TCK)? And in what way can the name be used once it is?
I look forward to your guidance.
Sincerely,
Dan Allen
