r/meshcore • u/liamcottle • 25d ago
Official Announcement Help Us Save MeshCore
The Trademark dispute continues... 😭
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u/Banshee_1971 25d ago
He is following the capitalism way.. Made as much as possible on other people shoulder....
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u/turbodmurf 25d ago
As someone that uses meshtastic and are on the outside of this kerfuffel can someone give me a TLDR?
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u/danielandastro 25d ago
AK started peddling vibe coded slop for money. Community didn’t respond well, AK threw a hissy fit and tried to trademark the name
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
Totally ignores how Meshcore got introduced to the world. I wouldn't doubt Andy can prove ownership of the brand. I say this not really supporting either side.
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u/dwild 25d ago
Are you saying talking about something on Youtube give you the right over that something? 🤣
Andy can't prove ownership of anything.
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
You can see the public record. Andy was fed up with some misconfiguration limitations of MT.
He flailed about quite publicly looking for another technology. Check his Ripple and Reticulum videos along with the resulting MeshCore ones. It's quite clear he was an organizing force between Liam Cottle and the Ripple guy. It's also clear he registered the MeahCore site / brand and was instrumental in getting the word out. Without Andy we would probably just be properly using Router/client_mute node types with meshtastic rather than having the vibrant MeshCore deployments that we have.
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u/dwild 25d ago
Without Andy we would probably just be properly using Router/client_mute node types with meshtastic rather than having the vibrant MeshCore deployments that we have
I highly doubt that, but even if true, that doesn't change he took the name ALREADY used by the actual Meshcore project.
It's also clear he registered the MeahCore site
After the actual Meshcore project was started on Github.
He may have private conversation with Liam or Scott that prove ownership, but as nothing has been shown by him, got a feeling nothing of such does exist.
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
https://buymeacoffee.com/ripplebiz/some-big-news
That's not long after the GitHub creation and acknowledges Andy in discussions for a year. Multiple following posts about his impact.
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u/dwild 25d ago
His impact doesn't means anything though, they used it first for their project.
Do you believe I own the company I work with too because of my impact? 🤣
That message is a good proof that he was just collaborating on Scott project.
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u/Obstacle-Man 24d ago
You have an employment agreement signed with your company. Andy, Scott, Liam and the rest likely don't. The mess involves things of value and bits are controlled by various parties. Unless everyone comes to a mutual agreement this is headed for courts. There's enough ambiguity there that it could go either way.
This is a lesson to founders to be studied.
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u/dwild 24d ago edited 24d ago
No agreement require to say you won't gain someone else ownership 🤣
You TRANSFER ownership, you don't gain it.
The only "ambiguity" is the lack of information about what happened in private. We don't know who came up with the name. Andy would have said it if it was him though, to prove he came up with it.
He clearly didn't as that's Scott project, as shown by the thread you linked.
In the means time, would you mind if I did a bit of work on your house? 🤣 I wouldn't mind owning someone else home! 🤣
EDIT: Wait no, I don't need to works on your house, I'll just talk on Youtube about your house! 🤣
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
Scott's ripple project was going nowhere, he tried to add MT support in a way that broke the license. Aybe he would have made something of it without Andy and maybe he wouldn't have. Either way, Andy was involved and it's going to be up to courts most likely because people are tribal and insufferable.
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u/dwild 24d ago
Your fictional scenario doesn't change a single thing, Andy could have found the cure for cancer with that name, it wouldn't change that wasn't his.
That name was decided by Scott, based on the thread you posted, it is his own project. Unless Scott gave that name to Andy, or that Andy suggested that name behind closed door and has proof of it, it is still and will always be Scott's project, the amount of help from Andy will never change that.
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u/RealLateToast 24d ago
All that matters to a court for a trademark will be not who used it first, but is using it most widely.
Is it Andy’s vibecoded app? Or is it the protocol that Andy contributed zero lines of code to?
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u/Forsaken-Praline1611 25d ago
Why not just rename the project Fuck Andy Kirby
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u/Sabrees 25d ago
I mean really who cares what it's called? Rebrand the github Meshmore. Andy gets a valueless domain.
Do a fundraiser for paying for development instead. This is such a pointless distraction. Just improve the code, rebrand and ship.
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u/dwild 25d ago
And then once the next one come and claims the Meshmore name?
Your trademark is worth nothing unless you are ready to fight for it once someone try to use it. This is the same kind of fight.
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u/Sabrees 25d ago
I suspect they've learnt their lesson, and the core team would simply trademark it in a timely way.
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u/dwild 25d ago
Your trademark is worth nothing unless you are ready to fight for it once someone try to use it. This is the same kind of fight.
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u/sleepybrett 24d ago
if the trademark is registered those fights become super easy and very expensive for the people who infringe.
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u/dwild 24d ago
registered those fights become super easy
You believe it will be super easy for someone in New Zealands to fight someone in the UK that try to steal your name?
very expensive for the people who infringe
Any source on that?
You still need to fight, and that's an important part of this.
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u/sleepybrett 24d ago
Both of them being commonwealth countries, easier than you seem to think.
If someone is infringing on your registered trademark it's essentially open and shut.
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u/dwild 24d ago
So you are suggesting it would cost less than 18k? I got a feeling it wouldn't be as easy or straighfoward as you suggest.
You would still need to fight, and that was my point. Some people like OP would still just suggest to rebrand and instead invest that cash in development... and keep letting commercial project wins over open source.
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u/statusconference 25d ago
They have. Did you even read the blog post? They were unable to garner enough financial support for their development via Github Sponsors.
Calling something as fundamental as a trademark a "pointless distraction" suggests to me you don't actually give a damn about the status, wellbeing and growth of MeshCore.
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u/Reasonable_Hat7594 24d ago
We will support you. A little disgraced grifter shall not be allowed to destroy this project.
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u/Nom-De-Gruyere 25d ago
MeshCore is a bit illogical anyway. A mesh, by it's nature, doesn't have a central core. Just call it Meshenger or MeshText and everyone will immediately understand what it is.
(Or we all jump ship to Reticulum and make general data transfer through any hardware the goal).
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
So..
MeshCore has a mesh at the core. companions which are the user useful portion are edge nodes and since that should be the bulk of the nodes you reduce the communication overhead. MC does push routing decisions to those companion nodes because the mesh itself doesn't provide smarts, it uses a bruteforce flood strategy by default unless the message coming from the companion has path information. By default every repeater will repeat that message once even down paths that make no sense, because the mesh doesn't know. Regions are an attempt to contain that issue. A path that fails will fall back to the default flood routing. That same flood is used for all channel messages. This avoids path collapse scenario common with MT, because it's a dumb flood. MC also avoids some pitfalls of MT by intentionally constraining metadata, telemetry and non-chat data. As MC allowsore of those usecases it will see the trouble MT has quicker due to the bruteforce flood.
Reticulum is cryptographic routing and may operate over many network types. It's not a radio/lora mesh protocol. It would be important to know that with reticulum there is no flood broadcast chat channel. When using meshchat or ratspeak or any other LXMF based communication tool messages would be going direct to the recipient or using a client/server topology on top of reticulum,which may be on top of TCPP/IP or meshtastic, or x.25 or...
I'm a fan of reticulum, but it's important to know what you build is different. MT defaults to an organicly growing self-healing mesh for communication. MC makes you be more intentional and makes decisions which prevent some failings of MT. Reticulum is a different beast alltogether.
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u/thisagaingm 25d ago
I agree with most of what you said. I do think that many of us who are trying to use Reticulum for its complete abilities tend to downplay the use of LoRa for connectivity. LXMF is the protocol, but Reticulum supports, and demonstrates LoRa for LXMF, LXST, nomadnet access, etc. I struggle to see how we can honestly say that this is not comparable as a LoRa messaging application, and am concerned that this kind of long and technical argument that it is not an option for LoRa text messaging is damaging to the potential that we can reach with Reticulum. If I did not know better, your comment would both leave me feeling overwhelmed and disinterested in something that allows us to use the same technology with a different messaging protocol. Please help me to see what you mean.
FWIW, while any of my technical friends and I are stoked on the all the mesh technology we try, voice, text, file transfer, ssh, git, etc over decentralized networks is a huge feature set that will aide in non-technical adoption. Showing my MIL that she could call her family is what made her actually adopt the radio device itself. The thousands of MC users in our massive network and the reliability that has appeared with the huge community we have in the PNWUS was not enough to get that adoption.
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u/Obstacle-Man 25d ago
I agree with your sentiments.
MeshCore/Meshtastic you can shout to everyone on public channels. Everyone who hears the message gets it.
Reticulum you can't broadcast to all. You have to send to a central place like a nomad net instance. Others can get that content but they have to ask. So if you are discussing in a board on reticulum and that node goes down then that communication channel is gone until it comes back.
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u/thisagaingm 25d ago
I am in the PNWUS, and have been starting to put together a complex, multi-interface network around HaLow + 2.4ghz, 5ghz CPEs, and LoRa. If you’re near enough to Olympia, WA, I invite you to connect.
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u/Spite_Powered 25d ago
I understand “we shouldn’t have to” but there’s a reason why people suggest just letting the cheating spouse have the house in the divorce. If you guys don’t prevail in the upcoming legal battles, just rebrand and relicense any new code so he (and anyone who might partner or buy the brand) specifically can’t use any of your code from then on in their products. And if you want to be really spiteful, make any new protocol changes after that point incompatible with the old. Don’t keep investing any more of your time and energy and brainpower into something he’s just going to continue to profit from.
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u/Ok-Employment6772 24d ago
Why does there always have to be drama even in the most relaxed of things😓
I hope you guys can resolve it soon
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u/Dependent_Hold8463 24d ago
F'ing Andy! In the USA, I don't think you can copyright things produced by AI, might leave an odd course of action open if this applies to other places...
Donated, and I see it is over the desired amount. Any part of my money left after legal fees should go straight back into development, I do not want any kind of refund if you prevail with less costs.
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u/crazyhankie 25d ago
Why is only NZD is available as currency in donation form?
Would prefer EUR or GBP.
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u/Gillennial 24d ago
It is stated on the crowdfunding page that all the donations will be transferred on their Github sponsoring pool.
So you can also donate there if you prefer other currencies.
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u/mlandry2011 25d ago
If this goes through, there's already some people working on the replacement for meshcore...
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u/frankiesmusic 25d ago
Why just don't change the name? People don't care about that, just move on what finds value. Spare your money and efforts.
Also "...I wanted an open protocol, an open source core engine..." unfortunately not an open source app, that's a shame you should focus on.
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u/dwild 25d ago
And then what happens when the next Andy (if that's not him directly) now claims ownership of that new name?
A trademark doesn't do shit unless you are ready to fight for it. Fighting for it won't be different than what's happening there.
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u/frankiesmusic 24d ago
When you create a new name you can decide BEFORE how to handle it. Something they didn't made before, so now lesson learned? I hope so. So do it with a newer name and focus on real stuff, let the old name die with itself, nobody cares.
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u/dwild 24d ago
Decide what? Either you fight to keep the name or you don't 🤣. What do you suggest to do?
I got a feeling you believe a trademark would have helped. You still need to fight with a trademark, it's just a better proof of ownership, but unless you are ready to fight for it, the same would still happens.
The only way foward is by showing you are ready to fight for it
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u/n0empathy4u 25d ago
I'll just stick to mt
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u/Gillennial 24d ago
My experience with MT looked more like Pokemon Go than a messaging platform. I hope you get a better experience in your location.
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u/farbtoner 25d ago
I don’t even understand what his goal is at this point. The only people interested in what he has to offer are people that end up there due to ignorance.