Re: Virtual (tm) TWM desktop and Solbourne

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Article #75394

#75394

From: Edward Vielmetti
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 1990 06:14

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My understanding from e-mail batted back and forth with someone
at Solbourne (not their legal department, as far as I can tell)
is that there is a trademark on the words
	Virtual Desktop (tm)
which is owned by Solbourne and used to describe a feature or
constellation of features which 'vtwm' apparently mimics.

Let someone else call the same set of features "Virtual Desktop"
without the (tm) for long enough and your lose the trademark.
Cf. xerox, kleenex, lanalyzer.

"virtual" has been overused for a long time (virtual reality, virtual
memory, virtual disk) and doesn't deserve any further abuse.
"desktop", well sun has their "open desktop (tm)", there's "desktop
publishing", comp.text.desktop, et al ad nauseum.  Open, closed,
virtual, real, my screen never looks much like my desktop and I
don't particularly want it too, i'd never find anything

Pick a new name and let's get on with it.

--Ed

Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv@math.lsa.umich.edu>

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From: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Virtual (tm) TWM desktop and Solbourne
Message-ID: <EMV.90Aug11011428@urania.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 90 06:14:28 GMT
References: <9008100038.AA03110@rice-chex> <ar6r1j.2lj@wang.com>
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Distribution: gnu
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor MI.
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Posted: Sat Aug 11 07:14:28 1990
In-Reply-To: fitz@wang.com's message of 10 Aug 90 22:12:36 GMT

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