Comment Re:Don't mess with the geek's toys (Score 1) 114
Manager: "Hey, I heard about this new Gnome thing that Groupon is offering to install for Significantly Reduced Prices. You've been bothering me for the last year about upgrading our own gnome system, why not let them do the upgrade?"
IT Guy: "There's a huge difference between GNOME and Gnome, sir."
Manager: "Doesn't sound like there is, they both do point of sale, and Groupon has TOUCH! Everybody wants touchscreens, right?"
IT Guy: "Please just kill me now"
Yes, there's a lot of copyright bullshittery happening...but despite my own personal distaste for the GNOME project, this is bigger than that. Given that Groupon was trying to establish a presence in a market that GNOME already had a presence in, I'd think it'd kinda fall into the realm of "valid defense of a mark".
To use the vulnerable car analogy:
The GNOME group was running a small dealership that gave away free mopeds with the "GNOME" name on them.
A nearby radio station decides to start up a motorcycle dealership, selling motorbikes they call "Gnome".
End result would be that if I say "I got a payout from my bitcoin miner, I'm going to go buy myself a gnome", you might not know whether I'm getting a moped or a motorbike.