More on TTSSH and the SSH trademark

[Robert O'Callahan]

I would also like to mention that when I released TTSSH in May 1998, I had
no concerns about violating any trademarks because I observed that the
name "SSH" was already being used by several different parties for
different purposes --- as the name of Ylonen's original SSH package and
its derivatives, as the name of the protocol, and as a component of names
of other implementations and proposed implementations (e.g., FiSSH). It
never occurred to me to check out the legal situation and since no one has
ever bothered me about it, I've never worried about it. And now that I
look at the license for ssh-1.2.12, I'm pretty confident that (since TTSSH
is compatible with the SSH1 draft RFC) it was perfectly legitimate to
incorporate the name "ssh" into the name of my system.

Overall I think it's clear that for nearly three years, SSH Communications
has made no effort to prevent large-scale "infringement" of their
trademark by TTSSH and other parties, and therefore the name "SSH" has
passed into the public domain. Of course I'm not a lawyer, but I'll be
willing to hire one if they come after me.

Also, looking at the situation from more of a moral point of view,
although I appreciate what Tatu Ylonen and others have done for the
security community, I think pushing these trademark claims is pretty
sleazy. The IETF drafts all use the word "SSH" extensively and that's
obviously the name that everyone uses to talk about the protocols. It's
not fair that one party can incorporate the protocol name in their product
name but everyone else can't. If SSH Communications want to distinguish
themselves from OpenSSH --- which is a perfectly reasonable desire ---
they should change the name of their product and company.

In the future it would be good for the IETF to reject drafts that
incorporate trademarked names to stop this kind of thing happening again.

Rob
-- 
[Robert O'Callahan http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~roc 7th year CMU CS PhD student
"Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in
front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and
asked, 'Are you for us or for our enemies?' 'Neither,' he replied, 'but
as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.'" - Joshua 5:13-14]