[Juriwiki-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Trademark violation of our 'MediaWiki' mark

[Rowan Collins]

On 31/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Mav also said: "I suggested the name as a play on the foundation's name;
> Wikimedia ->
> MediaWiki." Now there's something I never knew. What was the software called
> before it was called MediaWiki?

Nothing, really, it just existed. My understanding is that its
precursor was referred to simply as "the PHP script" (since it
replaced UseMod, which is written in Perl) or "Phase 2"; the
additional rewrite to produce what is now MediaWiki was done under the
label "Phase 3". This is why the code lives in a module called
"phase3" of a Sourceforge CVS repository called simply "wikipedia";
there's also a module there labelled "newcodebase", and I'm sure I've
seen references to it as "PediaWiki" somewhere...

> Rowan Collins said: "I know the two can be distinct, but since at no point
> has copyright in
> the software belonged even partially to the WMF" Actually, that's not true.
> WMF currently owns the copyright on anything created by its employees as
> part of their duties.

Heh. I stand corrected, though only on the "even partially" part, as
far as copyright goes.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]