Dotster Ripping Off Drupal?
newms - June 9, 2007 - 05:28
I just came across Josh Koenig's post about Dotster's Content Management System. Apparently Dotster, a hosting company is advertising its Dotster Design Studio(SM) CMS. Problem is, from their screen shots, its clearly drupal that they are using and they are claiming a Service Mark (SM) for Drupal. Can they do that? Is it legal? Even if it is legal, it certainly seems very unethical and down right sleazy. Maybe as Josh says, we can email them our displeasure and withhold/withdraw business from them.
We'll try to get in touch with them.
Technically, they might not be doing anything wrong we'll try to get in touch with them. This is one of the reasons why we created the Drupal Association. :)
Free Software Foundation
I am sure that the Free Software Foundation, creator of the GPL, would be able to give some advice on this issue. If it is not addressed by the GPL2, they could add it to GPL 3 or 4.
LOL
good catch, newms.
I'm laughing out loud, because, ironically, they would probably garner more business if they pushed themselves as a Drupal friendly host, rather than trying to brand or present Drupal as their own 'Dotster Design Studio'.
As Dries says, they may not actually be breaking any rules...but I tend to agree with you..it is a tad sneaky. When I first saw the screenshots you linked, I thought it might just be a theme coincidence...i.e. they were using the same theme as Drupal...but, it looks like you're right. It is Drupal in wolfs clothing.
Dub
Josh was the one who caught
Josh was the one who caught them. It may very well be legal, but certainly it certainly seems unethical. This is something that the Drupal Association will probably have to develop policies for,i.e. what to do when a company tries to pass off drupal as their own branded product.
newms
We Create It.
Nice logo... although, "We Create It" should be, "We download and install it from Drupal.org" :P
Oh they aren't doing
Oh they aren't doing anything wrong by using the system, however claiming a service mark is pretty much the same as claiming ownership, that violates copyright laws, even with Drupal being an open-source-system.
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Michael O'Toole (LLB(Hons))
Gay Youth :: South East - Chair & Operations Administrator
Incorrect
I don't see any problem here. After all this is allowed by the GPL.
As to the service mark, it is for "Dotster Design Studio" not Drupal.
"our displeasure", "Withhold/withdraw" business? Huh?
A service mark incorporates
A service mark incorporates all aspects of said service, including the code required to run the services, indirectly they are claiming some form of ownership over drupal's UNEDITED codebase. If they'd changed it significantly it wouldn't be drupal.
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Michael O'Toole
Gay Youth :: South East - Chair & Operations Administrator
Misinformed
Dotster has a service called Design Studio. One of the many things they can do is provide Drupal as a CMS. They are entitled to call their service anything they want, and brand it any way they want.
Drupal is licensed under the GPL. The GPL does not have an advertising clause (like the Berkeley license), nor does it forbid incorporation of GPL software into commercial products. Tivo is allowed to call its product Tivo and not Linux-plus. D-Link can call its routers D-Link and not Linux-with-dnsmasq. Joomla can call itself Joomla and not the-CMS-formerly-known-as-Mambo.
That is clearly plagiarism,
That is clearly plagiarism, and that isn't allowed by the GPL
use of service mark is cause for concern
Their use of a service mark is very confusing. They seemed to have labeled their 'service' Design Studio. The phrasing of the sentences is misleading in that it implies that the CMS is this 'Design Studio', not the 'service' they provide.
If you pay very close attention you can realize that the SM is 'applying' to the service part and not the CMS, but the implication is that it is their CMS.
So, gut level reaction from the general community is outrage.
My reaction is, "cool that someone is providing Drupal services but annoyance that they seem to feel the need to use some deception/mis-direction in their advertising of those services". I suspect that they would do better to be clear that they offer services in building sites based on Drupal. However, it is their business, however the lack of clarity has generated negative publicity on some fronts. This is something they will have to decide what to do about.
I would be more hopeful that whomever is working for them is involved in the community contributing back bug fixes and qa reports for core and contrib modules based on their experience building and deploying sites.
If you are angry at Dotster I think their sub domain policy would be a greater cause for not using them. Using YOUR domain for their advertising and skewing your Google page rank stats would seriously concern me more then the other.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
I voiced my opinion straigt to Dotster
I made sure I took advantage of Dotster's contact form to convey my disgust of their, at the very least, unethical/misleading use of drupal. I wouldn't say I ripped them a new one but I definitely made it clear that I didn't think this was right even if it may be... well legal.
Anyways I think its misleading at best.
Peace,
-mpare
www.paretech.com
Did you figure out how to do something? Did you find documentation on Drupal.org inadequate? Well now it's your turn. Document your Success!
Are there options?
In my opinion, this is something that should be very high up on Drupal Association Agenda. How to license the brand(for a fee) and what and how to use it?
- Dotster may want to have a very small percentage split of the Net Profit with Association ( They would be doing a favor too as more funds means more cool stuff )
- A revenue sharing or licensing model if built can be used by many others like Dotster, Book Publishers, Training Providers that benefits both sides and Drupal too.
When I looked at the marketig email we received from Dotster about their Design Studio, we realized that this is going to get into a lengthy debate.
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Roshan Shah
T : 604-630-4292
Vancouver, Canada
Skype/GoogleTalk/Yahoo : bpocanada