SSH and trademarks

[Bjoern Groenvall]

Dear SSH community,

It has been brought to my attention that is has been disputed
whether the term "SSH" can be used freely as a term to describe
implementations compatible with the "SSH" protocols, due to trademark
issues. In particular, the owner of the "SSH" trademark argues that
implementations compatible with the "SSH" protocols shall no longer be
allowed to have names that in any way can be related to "SSH". This is
most undesirable. "SSH" has been coined as a term that describes a
particular computer communications protocol. As such, it is natural
for protocol-compatible implementations to have names that can be
associated with "SSH". Restricting the use of the term "SSH" is doing a
disservice to the Internet community.

In the Internet draft draft-ylonen-ssh-protocol-00.txt authored by
T. Ylonen and dated November 15 1995 the string "SSH" is used 6 times
as a name for a computer communications protocol. The title of the
document is "The SSH (Secure Shell) Remote Login Protocol". All
protocol constants have names that start with the substring "SSH_".

In a more recent Internet draft, coauthored by T. Ylonen and named "SSH
Protocol Architecture" (draft-ietf-secsh-architecture-07.txt) the term
"SSH" is used 14 times to denote a computer communications protocol.

For more than 5 years "SSH" has been used by T. Ylonen and others as a
name for a computer communications protocol. The Internet community
should be allowed to continue to do so, and also to name compatible
implementations accordingly.

As the creator of OSSH I would like to add that OSSH has been
distributed since May 4:th 1999. So far, none of T. Ylonen's
associaties have notified me of any unlawful use of the "SSH"
trademark.

Sincerely,
Björn Grönvall

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  _     _                                               ,_______________.  
Bjorn Gronvall (Björn Grönvall)                        /_______________/|     
Swedish Institute of Computer Science                  |               ||
PO Box 1263, S-164 29 Kista, Sweden                    | Schroedingers ||
Email: bg at sics.se, Phone +46 -8 633 15 25              |      Cat      |/
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