Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Something people are forgetting about the Gentoo / Luke-jr censorship issue

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 19:26:49 +0200

I'm sure this suggestion will go down like a lead balloon, but Bitcoin Core
is not the first project that's had issues with Linux distros silently
modifying their software as they package it. In this case Luke has changed
things to be closer to what users expect, which is good to see, but I
expect to see the same issue crop up with other Linux distributions in
future. The temptation to "improve" things when you're a middleman is just
too great.

The usual approach to fixing it is trademark the project name and use that
to enforce "clean" packaging. Firefox and Chrome both take this approach.
I'll probably do the same with Lighthouse (need to figure out the
trademarking process first).

The goal here is not to remove choice, rather to ensure people know what
they're getting. It's reasonable to assume if you do "emerge bitcoin" then
you're getting Bitcoin Core as distributed by bitcoin.org, not a highly
opinionated fork of it. Renaming a project and creating a package under the
new name is not only better for end users, but lets the fork grow into
something else and be more usable to people on other distros too.

In this case "Bitcoin" is already a trademark, though I lost track of who
owns it at the moment (the foundation?) but I guess Bitcoin Core is not.