[Foundation-l] Rethinking brands

[GerardM]

Anthony,
The "Stichting Open Progress" owns the domain "WiktionaryZ". We were told by
the Wikimedia Foundation that we could not use the name WiktionaryZ for our
project when it sadly became clear that our project would, for now, not be a
WMF project. Consequently we had to suffer the pain of renaming / rebranding
our project to OmegaWiki. We own the domain and it is still generating
traffic ..

Almost all occurrences of the name WiktionaryZ have been changed to
OmegaWiki except for some pointers that indicate that we have a history.
This history is ours. It is as unthinkable for the WMF to use the phrase
WiktionaryZ as it is indeed our domain.

For Erik there is no conflict of interest as the name WiktionaryZ is no
issue at all; we do not use it. On an organisational level, Open Progress
and the Wikimedia Foundation are in my opinion sister organisations who work
very much together to achieve the same or similar goals. The role that Erik
plays in the Stichting Open Progress and the role that Erik plays in the
Wikmedia Foundation is known to both organisations. So when there is a
potential conflict of interest it is a declared conflict of interest.

The technology and the data of OmegaWiki are respectively Free Software and
Open Content. We aim to provide technology and we hope / expect that this
functionality we are developing in Open Progress will be used where
applicable.

Thanks,
    Gerard Meijssen
    Voorzitter Stichting Open Progress

On 5/8/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Erik, according to your page on meta you work for the company
> OmegaWiki, which owns the domain name wiktionaryz.org.  Wouldn't you
> say that there is a conflict of interest here in your proposal of a
> plan which would severely dilute or destroy the Wiktionary trademark?
>
> Anthony
>
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