Re: SSH-> Secure Shell renaming is *not* official.

[Thor Simon <tls%cs.stevens-tech.edu@localhost>]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:01:16AM +0200, Tatu Ylonen wrote:
> > These drafts contain a change in document title (replacing "SSH" with
> > "Secure Shell" and/or "Secure Shell Remote Login Protocol").
> >
> > I was not notified or consulted in advance of these title changes and
> > they appear to have been made unilaterally by the document author(s)
> > and are not the result of working group consensus.
> 
> I went ahead and made the editorial changes unilaterally in view of

But you are not the working group chair, and nobody asked about
consensus on the working group mailing list, and it certainly appears to
me that there is, in fact, no consensus that that change should be made.

In other words, as you have repeatedly done throughout this present
unpleasantness, you once again publically misrepresented your authority, 
your actions, and the views and actions of others.

>   - cleaned up use of terms "SSH" and "Secure Shell" to conform to the
>     trademark usage guidelines and SSH's policy statement (we are
>     contributing the "Secure Shell" name to the public domain so that
>     it can be used to identify the Secure Shell protocol and any
>     Secure Shell implementation, but "ssh" is our brand name and
>     trademark, and it can only be used under a license from us and
>     such use must conform to our trademark guidelines; see www.ssh.com
>     for more information).  This change avoids the trademark issue
>     for the working group entirely.

There is no consensus whatsoever in the working group that the protocol
or drafts should be renamed, as you well know since you are on the same
mailing list the rest of the WG members are on; certainly you know full
well that the subject of consensus on this issue wasn't even discussed,
much less decided upon.

Once more, you publically misrepresent the nature and extent of your
trademark claims to "ssh".  The plain fact is that you do _not_ have a
trademark on "ssh"; you have a trademark on one particular graphical
representation of the letters "ssh", and you did not even seek a trademark
on the plain-text word "ssh", whether upper or lower-case, as your own
attorney confirmed in his response to the first correspondence from the
trademark examiner in your U.S. trademark file (I will be happy to provide
copies of this file to anyone who wants it).

Since you do not have an actual trademark on "ssh" as plain text, and
your trademark on "ssh" rendered in a particular way is irrelevant to
the work of the working group, the name of the protocol, or the names
of the drafts, I see no reason (and I suspect that few others do) that
we should rename anything at this time.  If you _did_ own such a mark, 
more working group members might be in favor of renaming the protocol 
as a means of sidestepping your unethical behaviour but as it stands, 
I doubt that we will reach consensus on rewarding your failed attempt 
at blackmail!

>   - changed the "Trademark issues" paragraph to be just a trademark
>     notice (noting the fact that "ssh" is a registered trademark); a
>     separate notice will be posted on the IETF Intellectual Property
>     Rights Notices page.

A "trademark notice" is not appropriate in the documents either; see
RFC 2026.  Furthermore, at this point you know full well that your
rights in this area are not what you would like to be able to publically
represent them to be; I find it the very epitome of highanded arrogance
that you have represented that you were authorized to submit new drafts
of the working-group's documents without consensus, when that's plainly
false, so that you could use those new drafts to have the IETF further your 
own agenda of publically misrepresenting the extent of your trademark rights.

> Let's discuss this further in the working group meeting in Minneapolis.
> 
> Note also that we have decided to abandon our trademark application
> for the name "Secure Shell" and dedicate it to public use.  We
> understand that the phrase Secure Shell is well known withing the
> community to describe the secure remote login protocol that I
> originally developed.

How nice.  I suspect that at this point you are aware that I instructed
my counsel several weeks ago to oppose the issuance of that mark on the 
grounds that the name in question is generic; I mention this only lest 
anyone think that you had "decided" to do anything altruistic rather than 
merely cynically attempt to create the appearance that you had done so.

Thor