Well, to be honest, they can do with their trademark as they wish. However, I do not believe that having a repo begin with docker- that constitutes endorsement by Docker, having a github.com/docker/something would, but not docker-something. For me, it just seems to be "something" for Docker, not by Docker.
> Well, to be honest, they can do with their trademark as they wish.
They can't do "as they wish". Trademark protection has specific limits, including nominative use ("our product does everything Docker does and more!", "made to work with Docker") and trademarks are specific to a type of product (no conflict between the docker software and a company that makes docks for your phone also called docker, for example).
It seems unlikely that it's legitimate for them to say any repo with "docker" in it is an infringing use, but I think it's often a useful strategy for companies to adopt a broad rule and count on the fact that almost no one will be willing to fight back on this sort of thing because it's much more costly to go to court rather than change the name of your project.
Not to mention that they can't legally stop a "docker sucks" site or "@dockersucks" twitter account because that's protected speech, has trademark exemptions, and years upon years of case law backing the protections.
I don't think so. Apparently the problem is only with repos starting with "docker". As an example, the project "dockercli" was renamed to "wharfee" due to legal issues with docker inc.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 28.9 ms ] threadThey can't do "as they wish". Trademark protection has specific limits, including nominative use ("our product does everything Docker does and more!", "made to work with Docker") and trademarks are specific to a type of product (no conflict between the docker software and a company that makes docks for your phone also called docker, for example).
It seems unlikely that it's legitimate for them to say any repo with "docker" in it is an infringing use, but I think it's often a useful strategy for companies to adopt a broad rule and count on the fact that almost no one will be willing to fight back on this sort of thing because it's much more costly to go to court rather than change the name of your project.
112.567 repositories with docker in name.
Big companies/projects are using docker.* repo names. To cite some:
Story detail says: "using the registered trademark Docker as the _first part_ of a repo name"
So imaginative name replacements like "wharfee" not necessarily required.