Consul – Open Government and E-Participation Web Software | Hacker News Reader

Consul – Open Government and E-Participation Web Software

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50 pointsanthelios19 comments

Hashicorp has a registered trademark on software named Consul[1] and started working on it in late 2013[2].

This is not a good name for software if it is already trademarked and was started before this project (by ~2 years).

[1] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:z7n...

[2] https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894d...

It looks like they are pretty aware of it too. There are a few issues in their tracker meant for hashicorp's consul and they directed them over to the right github project.

Mitchell and Armon are good people and I'd expect them to act in good faith as this isn't competition, but it is still bad form for someone to do this. In some cases it can result in the original trademark holder losing their trademark.

The entire system sucks.

Oh, I'm not at all saying they are acting in bad faith! I was just elaborating the information you brought up, that's all.

I agree that it's unfortunate they didn't pick a more unique name, but why would the government of Madrid (the developers of Consul) care about a US trademark? Hashicorp Consul has an EU trademark[1] but they only applied in late 2018.

I imagine Hashicorp Consule wasn't as well known in 2015 when the Consul project was started. Is it really expected for a Spanish developer to double check his name is A-OK with America?

[1] https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/01793038...

Well, there's Dove, the chocolate, and Dove, the soap. I don't think intelligent people will get confused at eat the soap or try to wash their hands with the chocolate. Let's not blow things out of proportions and comment on any name collision as something bad! Software projects come and go and Consul.io is not something that, in my view, will last forever.

Yes those are totally different. You can have a trademark of the same name for different things in different industries. This is allowable under USPTO guidance. However, these are both software, so your scenario isn't really comparable.

Let's compare:

https://github.com/consul/consul - 83 watchers, 758 stars, 486 forks

https://github.com/hashicorp/consul - 843 watchers, 14,686 stars, 2,548 forks

If any of those two is not going to last forever, it is this the one with a smaller community.

Yeah, but this is the situation now. If stars had an expiry, things could look quite different today.

Aside from the project itself (which I admittedly did not look at particularly closely), I can't help but wonder why authors choose a name that is already clearly in use [1]. Obviously picking a name is hard. Picking a name that is unique across the whole Interwebz is significantly harder. However, picking a name that is already in use in the tech sector just strikes me as strange.

What I would have loved though is if they named the project "etcd" or "Serf", since those projects deal with finding consensus of rather a different kind ... :)

[1]: https://www.consul.io/

EDIT: well, this project had its first commit back in July '15. Hashicorp's Consul changelog goes back to April '14. So I suppose at the time this project was conceived it's not unreasonable to consider that few people knew of Hashicorp's Consul.

2013 was when Hashicorp's Consul was started: https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894d...

This project is wonderful. Dozens of cities over the world are opening their doors to its citizens thanks to it. In Madrid, inhabitants have a direct vote on how to spend _millions_ of the city budget.

I wish the future of our society goes in this direction.

As a newcomer to online governments, I wonder how things like trust are handled? For instance, how does the government trust that I am a citizen and how do I prove that trust? How do I know I can trust the installation of this software and that its free from tampering or hacking? Universal ID is something that is needed.

I'm not sure about the identification of users and universal ID issue, but I can speak to the installation pieces.

The license the project uses (AGPLv3) requires any server running a modified version of the software must include the source code. While it may not be possible to verify the source code running on someone else's server, you have the freedom to run the program on a server that you control. This ensures the version you are interacting with is not tampered with. Because the source code (and any modified code you can access on a network) are available, you or others can audit the code for security vulnerabilities.

This isn't a perfect solution because not everyone knows how to set up a server, but it definitely reduces the potential for abuse.

According to

https://manual.consulproject.org/en/article/verify-your-acco...

the service can verify your identity relying on the city census. I wonder if you can identify yourself with a reader and your ID, which is mandatory and universal in Spain

https://firmaelectronica.gob.es/Home/en/Ciudadanos/DNI-Elect...

http://consulproject.org for the curious.

This is very interesting project. I follow its development since inception.

It is related with Decidim (Catalan for "we decide"). For those curious about, check it here: https://decidim.org/

How does this software prevent ballot stuffing / SPAM / malicious actors?

It depends on the government entity using the software. Madrid validates identities using your census data. Estonia would use their national ID cards and card reader.

I used this recently, it needs better documentation. Still, cool project.

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