Talk about how to break the Internet

An incident recently occurred that caused many NPM packages to fail. The reason was the withdrawal of its modules by one of the developers on the grounds of a conflict with the software company that selected the package name they liked. The developer’s point of view can be read here . And under the cut is the comment of Kik’s manager.

Hello! I am the head of the Kik project. I would really like to dedicate my first post on Medium to something else, but free software is a topic that worries me a lot. In the past, I myself have published a few simple opensource projects — nothing revolutionary, but it seemed to me that they might be useful to others. And every day I use what other developers have created.
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Like many of you, I discovered this problem by chance when our programs stopped gathering, since we used the incredibly easy-to-use tool JSCS . The JSCS module, which was withdrawn by its author yesterday, turned out to be in the long dependency chain of JSCS . At that moment, our team was also puzzled.

Kik has been living in this world for quite some time, and it seemed to us that the name kik that Eyzer chose for his NPM module could lead to confusion. In fact, as soon as it became clear to us that Eyzer did not intend to change the name of the module, we decided to give a different name to our package, which we were going to put on NPM. Of course, we hoped that Eyzer would change his mind, but continued to develop our package under a different name, even when we were told that we could use the name kik .

Do you know what is really cool in opensource? The fact that I can go into a project like Redux or Express , look under the hood and see how people work on all this, understand the motives of their decisions. It is very informative, and also helps to build trusting relationships. Since this incident broke a bunch of different projects around the world, I want to reveal all the information I have. I cite here the full text of our correspondence (please keep in mind: Bob is not a lawyer, but our patent agent).

We didn’t pick the words too carefully, and therefore our letters may not seem very correct. Excuse us for this. All we tried to do was to politely ask permission to use the Kik name for the NPM package of our opensource project, to which that name would be very suitable.

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Bob Stratton (March 11, 10:20)

Eyzer, we are appealing to you because we would very much like to use our name “kik” for an important package that we are going to release soon. Unfortunately, you already use the names "kik" and "kik-starter" - and this means that our users will be puzzled and / or will not be able to find our package.

Could you rename your kik package?

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Eyzer (March 11, 10:50)

Sorry, but I'm already developing my opensource project with this name.

Bob Stratton (March 11, 11:26)

We don’t want to appear as assholes, but kik is a trademark registered in most countries of the world, and if you really release an opensource project called “kik”, our lawyers will knock on your door, block your account and so on. And you will have no choice but to fulfill our requirements. We will have to do so - because if we do not protect our trademark, we will simply lose it.

Are we not able to find a compromise and convince you to rename the package without attracting lawyers? Maybe we can offer you some reward for renaming the package?

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Eyzer (March 11, 12:34)

haha, and you really act like assholes. so go on x @ #. do not write me anymore.

After the appearance of certain difficulties in communication, Bob wrote a letter to the NPM support service.

Bob Stratton (March 11, 12:42)

It seems that a peaceful way to resolve the situation will not succeed. Can you guys help?

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Bob again wrote a letter to Eiser, to try to end the dialogue with sanity.

Bob Stratton (March 11, 12:44)

We are really trying to behave reasonably and find some favorable way out of this situation. I do not know why you decided that this makes us assholes.

Are we not able to compensate you for the inconvenience associated with changing the package name?

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Eyser's response to the last letter:

Eyzer (March 11, 12:52)

Yes, you can buy this name for $ 30,000. Perhaps it will be a suitable compensation for the inconvenience associated with the abandonment of my pet-project for a bunch of assholes from the corporation

Correspondence with NPM technical support

Bob Stratton (March 11, 12:57)

We can't do anything about it - guys, can you help? KIK is a trademark registered in many countries of the world, including the United States and the European Union. We have over 270 million users. We would like to release our package under the name kik, and we fear that if it has a different name, then our users will be confused by the Eyser package called kik. We really would not like to call lawyers, and we try to behave decently - but Eyzer does not seem to want to behave properly.

We will be glad to any help.

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Bob Stratton (March 11, 12:59)

Help guys. It does not appear that Eyser honors the “be respectful” clause from your user agreement. :-)

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

Bob Stratton (March 16, 08:42)

Hey. I apologize for the intrusiveness, but I really would not want to involve lawyers and all that. Can you help us guys? Looks like you can't make porridge with Aizer.

Bob Stratton

kik Interactive

NPM final answer

Isaac Schluter (npm) (March 18, 16:39)

Hello, Aizer.

I understand your displeasure. You made it clear that you want to continue using the names kik and kik-starter for your packages.

Our goal is to make publishing and installing packages as simple as possible. In this situation, we believe that the majority of users who find the kik package will rightly assume that it is related to kik.com. And if so, the transfer of this name to kik corresponds to our goal. I understand that you have already spent a lot of time and effort on development - and we treat it with respect. I hope that you can publish this project under a new name.

Bean,
report the account name to npm, for which you need to assign this name.

Thank you both for your patience and understanding.

Bob Stratton (March 18, 5:00 pm)

Thank you for your help - we appreciate it highly.

I will request your account information and send it to you.

Bob stratton

And here's the last letter from Eyser

Eyzer (March 2, 2:22)

Isaac, I'm very upset by your decision. I have known you for several years - and I couldn’t even imagine that you would take the side of patent lawyers who are threatening free software developers.

There are hundreds of modules similar to kik - for example, Square:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/square

Well, will you allow these corporate lawyers to register any name they want? No one is looking for a Kik package, because no one has it.

I want you to delete my account with all my modules, including this one. I no longer wish to be part of NPM. If you do not perform such operations, then tell me how I can quickly do it on my own. I think I have the right to remove everything from NPM that I brought here.

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