[Inpycon] Announcing PyCon Pune 2017 & Call for Volunteers

[Anand B Pillai]

On Monday 17 October 2016 08:48 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV wrote:
> 
> We're talking at cross purposes here. Let me try to explain.
> 
> I'm not arguing (or for that matter even interested in) whether using
> the name is legal (esp. from a copyright perspective) or not.  This
> indifference of mine extends to the organisations who do have an
> interest in the topic and their members (specifically the PSSI and PSF).
> Your analysis of the topic, while accurate, is not really addressing my
> concern.
> 
> I'm also not interested in authority. If Kushal and other others who are
> most involved with this effort right now go ahead and just use the name,
> no one can legally shut them down or anything. Please note, I'm not
> arguing about whether someone can shut them down or not (as you seem to
> imply that the PSSI cannot). I'm saying that I'm not interested in the
> question and am addressing another point.
> 
> My objections are as follows. 
> 
> 1. Using the name violates a rather deep set convention of having one
>    PyCon per country (or in the case of APAC, a group of
>    countries). This gives it a certain "national" character.
> 
> 2. Having more than one "PyCon *" in India per year dilutes the
>    brand. It splits the sponsors, divides the community etc.
> 
> Now both of these objections can over ruled if there is a genuine
> reason to use the "PyCon *" name. There were two that were brought up
> namely size and duration. Both of these, to me, are not sufficient
> reasons and that's where we are. Secondly, the whole thread can be
> aborted as Thin Rhino suggested by simply using a name like PyPune. Why
> is that not an option?
> 
> I don't view the original email as "asking permission" nor do I view the
> resulting thread as an attempt to "deny permission". It's a discussion
> where certain people have raised objections based, not on the legality
> of using the name, but whether it's simply a good idea or not.
> 
> As a poor analogy to try to explain my position, I don't think it's
> "illegal" in any way to conduct a Ruby conference in Bangalore and
> call it "PyCon Kozhikode". It's inappropriate and would probably be
> rightly criticised by all communities involved. The idea should be
> shot down because of this community disagreement rather than a tenuous
> argument which proves that it's not "legal" to do this.
> 

Nobody could have explained it better than Noufal. Nobody is talking in
terms of legalities here. The point is about breaking a community
convention which can split the Python community, cause confusion among
the sponsors etc.

To give an exact analogy in programming, if conference is a Python
program, we are talking of PEP8 not a programming error.

And so far the organizers have been mum about not exercising the other
name options and the exact reasons for going against the convention and
thereby alienating a portion of the Python community. The only reasons I
hear so far is because "hey it ain't illegal".


-- 
Regards,

--Anand

----------------------------
Software Architect/Consultant
anandpillai at letterboxes.org

http://twitter.com/skeptichacker