SSH trademarks and the OpenSSH product name

[Ian Goldberg]

Damien Miller wrote:
> To my knowledge you have not contacted any of the other implementors of
> SSH clients and servers who use 'SSH' in the name of there product
> (there are several). Why are you 1) making an issue now, when there have
> been SSH implementations using 'SSH' in their names for several years?
> and 2) targeting the OpenSSH team only?

[Note: I'm not actually subscribed to this list; I was pointed to the
web archive...]

So I guess I should throw in my CA$0.02.  IANAL, so I'm going to
restrict this message to facts, and not opinions.

When I wrote an independent implementation of the RFC file contained in
the ssh distribution (a version for the Palm Pilot, called Top Gun ssh),
I used "ssh" in the name because that was the name of the protocol, as
outlined in the RFC.  Certainly TGssh was not a derived work of ssh
in the copyright sense; it was merely an implementation of the ssh
protocol.

This was in the summer of 1997.  I exchanged email with Tatu,
Camillo Sars, and Kalle Kaukonen at the time (I had found discrepancies
between the ssh RFC and the ssh deployed software); Tatu even asked me
if I'd be willing to do an implementation of the 2.0 protocol.  No one
ever asked me to not use the "ssh" name in the program title.

   - Ian