[Python-Dev] Someons's put a "Python 2.8" on GitHub

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Wes Turner writes:
 > [Continuing to play devil's advocate for the sake of clarification]

I will answer briefly here, but for further discussion, I will go to
personal mail.  (I don't recommend that, I'm really at the limit of
things I ever knew well. ;-)

 > On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 2:40 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <
 > turnbull.stephen.fw at u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:
 > 
 > > The legal theory is that the name "Python" is reserved so that
 > > users can know that Python-Dev's strict (or not so, YMMV) QA
 > > policies have been applied
 > 
 > These are QA'd:

I should have put "QA" in scare quotes.  It's not about what actually
happens in Python, it's the legal theory that as a trademark of the
PSF it carries the PSF's "reputational capital", whatever that may
be.

 > There's really a "ship of theseus" argument: it is defacto standard

De jure in the U.S. (and most jurisdictions I know about) doesn't much
care about "de facto" if it gets to court.[1]

 > How extensive those patches are is likely irrelevant to a trademark
 > dispute (of which there is none here).

Ah, but there *is* a trademark dispute that is relevant here: a future
one.

For other practical considerations, Nick's explanation of distro (or
Red Hat or Fedora?) considerations was helpful to me (as I said, it's
been a decade or so since I looked closely at this stuff).

Steve

Footnotes: 
[1]  Japan is interesting: it rarely gets to court, so bureaucrats can
effectively sanction illegal activity if it's considered to be
socially beneficial.  A recent example I heard about is community
gardens, which violate some nitpicky agricultural laws, but help
preserve greenery and feed the impecunious elderly in large cities.
There are less savory examples, too. :-(