Hi kokroo
Really interested in your work. Please let me know if your prototypes are ready. Interested to buy a few of them for testing. I think I know a target audience for a more commercial version then the currently available ones.
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Try to make lights and sounds user settable - there are situations (under Night Vision) where I wouldnât want visible lights, or any sounds. Will definitely buy though.
@Leggera Hello, thanks for your interest. I will surely send out a couple dozen devices to forum members and the dev team.
@eebenbarlowe I will definitely make it user-configured. This device will be completely open-source, so all hardware designs and software will be open to the public to hack, modify and extend.
@mc-hamster @garth
I have progressed on 2 fronts:
- Secured another six figure funding for my new device.
- Established production capabilities of 2 OEMs.
The third thing I need to do is to decide if we should go ahead with Meshtastic or develop our own open source Meshtastic replacement. I am not sure about the legal aspects of advertising our product with the Meshtastic logo, preloading the device with Meshtastic, or forking Meshtastic.
We will be hiring 2 full time engineers to add features to the firmware and mobile apps. Since this will be a retail product, it needs to be polished very well. And I am quite certain these changes will not be welcomed so quickly into the main branch.
Any advice on how to proceed or suggestions will be highly appreciated. We can discuss it privately too if youâd like.
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Please refer to your own legal counsel for guidance on how to work with trademarks, copyrights and licenses. Affirmative legal guidance or feedback for a commercial effort wonât come from anyone in this group.
For what software to go with, that depends on your own business goals.
We tend to accept PRs within a week for well over 95% of the cases.
This is very exciting!
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A legal team will surely work that out, but despite that, I would like to know the desires of the project maintainers.
Perhaps you donât want people forking the project. Maybe youâd like 1$ per device sold as a donation to the project. There are a lot of unspoken rules and I would mostly like to work hand in hand instead of going against the flow.
Regarding the software, the Meshtastic firmware is nearly perfect. There are no business goals except user satisfaction and monetary profit.
I am just worried about PRs that might break backward compatibility. In that case, should one just fork meshtastic at that point? I am not even sure if the license allows it.
We canât stop you from forking the project but big forks tend to be the death of open source projects and the community that supports the project. A good open source project isnât just about the code. The code is second. Whatâs most important is thereâs a group of like minded people thatâs having fun together. If weâre not having fun, we wonât hang out.
For what you provide back to the project, we canât dictate that. You decide what you believe the project needs and works for you to give back It could be monetary, code contributions, customer support or something else.
Get to the problem of breaking backward compatibility when you get an absolute need to do so then the approach to engineer a solution can be approached.
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GPL3 is viral, so even if you fork you would be forever tied to Meshtastic and required to make your code available and contribute back A Quick Guide to GPLv3 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Rightly said, hence why I would like everyone to do things hand in hand happily.
@garth We are open source by default, on both the hardware and software end, so this aligns with our philosophy 100%.
There are existing devices shipping with rather outdated versions of this project, and the manufactures mention Meshtastic on the sales pages. At least they use to last time I was shopping for hardware.
I wonder, as in not legal advice, if you could market your device as Meshtastic compatible, ship the devices with Meshtastic preloaded, but build your own branding independent of this project.
A truly open eco system will have an advantage over closed platforms like GoTenna. Its kind of disappointing, but not a surprise, that there are so many LORA communication projects that âroll their ownâ for one reason or another.
Two full time programmers contributing to this project could be just the thing for others to start considering Meshtastic compatible implementations for other projects. Things like disaster.radio and the different communicator type devices all have the potential to benefit each other if they could use compatible LORA meshes.
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That would still be using the trademark, which needs to be negotiated.
What kind of negotiations will these be and who will be holding the rights to negotiate in such a case?
The person controlling the trademarks gave you pretty clear guidance.
I didnât know he controls it.
Iâm not sure who filed the paperwork. From what I recall @geeksville started this project. For some time now @mc-hamster has been very active in all aspects, not just code, in geeksvillâs absence.
The legal issues of Trademarks is rather nuanced. I found this bit of information to be relevant but a lawyer has not reviewed it.
Trademark infringement is when a mark is used by someone that is not the trademark owner in a way that will likely cause consumers to be confused about the source of the trademarked item.
Apple Inc. has specific allowances for use of trademarks, such as âCompatible with iPhone 5 SEâ. If the legal entity side of Meshtastic doesnât have such a thing regarding trademarks hopefully this can be sorted out.
My lay person take away from experience and some google searches is that @kokroo can create a product, in this case hardware, and market it and brand it separately and independently from Meshtastic, Such as âKoR00 Long Range Communicatorâ. Whatever is chosen should make it clear the product is being sold by someone other than Meshtastic.
When kokroo markets their products they should be able to say things like âContributor to the MeshtasticÂŽ projectâ. Or âCompatible with MeshtasticÂŽ 1.3.2â
I donât think this is really any different than PC manufactures being able to claim âWindows 10 readyâ. That said Microsoft put some work in on there end to create specific allowed uses of the Windows trademark. If Meshtastic hasnât done so thatâs on the project to fix, not kokroo.
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We do have a registered trade mark.
Great idea on a usage guide!
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As an authorized representative this project, I advise you to seek council to advise you further on how to operate within the guidelines of our licenses.
No one associated with this project will be able to give you legal advice. We are not lawyers.
If you have specific questions, ask away. If itâs legal in nature, Iâll advice you seek legal guidance. We can have a call or meet if thatâs easier for you too.
If you are going to be contributing back to the project as a company, to cover everyone in your organization that may be involved with Meshtastic, we could also have you sign an Entity Contributor License where you would approve everyone in your organization to contribute to Meshtastic rather than having them do it one at a time. Totally up to you if that makes things easier.
Totally spot on.
Think of Apache, Linux or any other open source project. They may have branding guides and templates, we do not. That said, there are areas of trademark usage that anyone who uses Meshtastic can work within.
What do you think of this? Anything stand out?
https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines
That content is Creative Commons. We can adopt it for our own use.
Hi, I am not trying to seek legal advice here. Just wanted some pointers and leads to go in the right direction. The âEntity Contributor Licenseâ advice, for example, is the kind of advice I was seeking.
I think itâs a good idea to publish clear trademark rules/guidelines on the website so that any new parties interested have somewhere to start. Cheers!
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