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Release of our WordPress plugin on WordPress.org – not yet

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by

André Menrath

Our plugin submission to WordPress.org has just been rejected by the reviewers because they are concerned about trademark infringement by starting the plugin slug with “activitypub”.

The current name is ActivityPub Event Bridge and therefore the slug is activitypub-event-bridge. They suggest to rename it to Event Bridge for ActivityPub and adjust the slug to event-bridge-activitypub.

Should we just comply and do as they say, or should we make them reconsider that “ActivityPub” is not a trademark in this sense?

@pfefferle I would really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this.

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Comments

11 responses to “Release of our WordPress plugin on WordPress.org – not yet”

  1. Matthias Pfefferle Avatar
    Matthias Pfefferle

    @blog phew… that's an interesting and surprising one

    1. André Menrath Avatar
      André Menrath

      @pfefferle @blog So if you don't see a blocker in keeping the name as it is, I would respond and point out that ActivityPub is not a companies name, or the name of a commercial product but a W3C protocol. I think it could be possible that reviewer never heard the term before.@evan (FYI)

      1. Matthias Pfefferle Avatar
        Matthias Pfefferle

        @linos @blog @evan personally I do not see a blocker here, but I am not sure if this changes something 🙂

      2. Marcus Meindel Avatar
        Marcus Meindel

        @linos @pfefferle @blog @evan I think your explanation could make them understand and "Event Bridge for ActivityPub" feels just wrong. Try to keep the name, please.

  2. André Menrath Avatar
    André Menrath

    To cite them correctly, they wrote:

    We found a possible issue about the use of trademarks in your plugin
    preventing it from being approved immediately.

    So someone is suspicious and unsure. And I can agree that it’s not the reviewer’s job to investigate further.

    Reply
  3. harce Avatar
    harce

    @blog @cwebber would you care to comment on the possible ActivityPub tradmark violation? Sounds like maybe someone should reach out to John Mastodon as well…

    1. harce Avatar
      harce

      @cwebber you out of the epic fedi threads yet? Your opinion would help here.

  4. Martin Dougiamas Avatar
    Martin Dougiamas

    I have some sympathy for the reviewer here.

    At Moodle (an open source project) we have lots of people in the community coming up with Moodle this and Moodle that (*often not very good quality*) but because they put Moodle prominently in the name it looks like it’s official and comes direct from the main developers. This affects Moodle’s reputation and confuses everyone wrt support, etc. For this reason alone we do ask people to ask us when they want to use the name in a product.

    I get ActivityPub is an open protocol but it’s the same effect. eg what happens where there are 5 similar plugins called ActivityPub? Confusion.

    So I’d probably recommend something like [Something] Event Bridge for ActivityPub, for the least possible future confusion while keeping the searchability.

    Reply
    1. André Menrath Avatar
      André Menrath

      @martin Hello Martin! You should have experienced the joy we just had in our kitchen when we saw your comment. I had just explained over morning coffee how different it feels to contribute to Moodle and be part of the Moodle community than to develop in the WordPress world.

      Thank you for your words, they really make me think again. Nevertheless, I think the situation is a bit more subtle, the relation is in my opinion comparable to a Moodle plugin type, for example there is now a plugin type “communication” and all plugins within this type now start with it, e.g. “communication_matrix”. My plugin is not in competition with the plugin named ActivityPub but is a sub-plugin that is directly dependent on it.

      Reply
      1. Martin Dougiamas Avatar
        Martin Dougiamas

        “My plugin is not in competition with the plugin named ActivityPub but is a sub-plugin that is directly dependent on it.” – ah! Then in that case it makes a lot more sense (for usability by end users)

        (and hi!)

        Reply
        1. Martin Dougiamas Avatar
          Martin Dougiamas

          (Then again, if it doesn’t matter too much to you or the functionality, then perhaps it’s better for the long run to let them do their job and you can think about the next thing 🙂 )

          Reply

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