Comodo Attempting to Register Let’s Encrypt Trademarks
letsencrypt.org//2016/06/23/defending-our-bra...Posted Jun 23, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC
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letsencrypt.org
Seriously? This will be a PR fiasco for them, they must know that. They also must know how easy it is for people to leave them for another service. Stupid.
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They also must know how easy it is for people to leave them for another service
With the help of Let's Encrypt :)
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Which one? /s
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Exactly!
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We already started offering free Let's Encrypt certificates to all of our hosting clients but, because of this, we will no longer be offering Comodo SSL certs. Genius move, Comodo.
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which host are you?
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RedLotus Austin would be my guess, but it's tough to be sure :)
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No no no. This is all complete unfounded conjecture. We're going to need to get a detective in here to do some digging and find out for sure.
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I'm also going to push this now
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Well isn't this some fucked-up piece of fuckry.
Can I replace my Comodo SSL certs with LE cert without first revoking the Comodo certs? I have about 10 months left on my Comodo certs.
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Yes, you don't need to revoke the other certs first.
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Thanks for the info. LE and cron are about to be best friends on my web-servers.
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But since its free you should
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I have a feeling he's not asking because of pricing, but because of the possibility of downtime if temporary double-coverage wasn't an option.
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Forum post by the CEO: https://i.imgur.com/7MfFBar.png
"We invented the 90 day free SSL"
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Why can't high level business folk just learn to stay off the internet? How is this going to make things better for them?
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At the very least don't make your post sound like you're some random angry internet guy. I'd never guess that post was made by the CEO if it was anonymous.
All that post reads is "They're the bad guys! Not us!"
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Melih has form for this sort of discussion though.
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Why is he talking about 90 days? I taught LE was free forever. He's hitting again and again the key that LE stole their specific 90-day-free business model.
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It's free forever but all certificates only have a lifetime of 90 days, you have to renew every 90 days. But calling a specific lifetime a business model is just silly.
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From Comodo's website:
Free SSL certificates are valid for 90 days and are limited to one issuance per domain.
While they offer a free cert for 90 day, it is only a trial after the 90 days you have to pay for a real one. Honestly this is why CEO's should always run their post through Marketing/PR it is a apple and oranges. Now he just seems like a raging asshole who doesn't even understand his own business.
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Why is he using wheels on his car? It is clearly invented by people from olden days.
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Thats fucked up,
They are scared, lets encrypt is growing fast, they are now the 5th SSL issuer on the market.
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This graph tho
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Comodo is panicking as their cheap certificate segment is crashing. Bringing in the lawyers because they cannot compete is a last attempt to salvage or stretch their business.
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30 clients, all with various Comodo certs.
I'm taking time out of my weekend to switch all of them off if this shit doesn't stop. Drop in the bucket sure, but most people who do internet related things like encryption and want to make it more accessible.
It's just a douchy thing. It's like when Groupon tried to impose on The Gnome Foundation's trademark. Just say no.
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It's like when Groupon tried to impose on The Gnome Foundation's trademark. Just say no.
This is far worse than that. Groupon simply wanted to name their Point of Sale device "Gnome", but the Gnome Foundation felt that it would have infringed on their trademark. It wasn't at all intentional, and Groupon eventually decided to change the product's name.
Comodo, however, is making an obvious attempt to fuck over their new competition. Rather than trying to compete based on merits, they're simply trying to destroy LE by abusing the legal system to exploit LE's stupid mistake.
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A bit sad though, they don't even want to open any discussion, since any mail sent to [email protected] containing the text "Let's encrypt" will be blocked and identified as a virus.
I wonder how much bad PR they need, I certainly didn't forget how their weak SSL certificates lead to a security breach a few years ago.
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Weird. Why would they block the name they're trying to trademark.
Unless...
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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 70%. (I'm a bot)
These trademark applications were filed long after the Internet Security Research Group started using the name Let's Encrypt publicly in November of 2014, and despite the fact Comodo's "Intent to use" trademark filings acknowledge that it has never used "Let's Encrypt" as a brand.
We are clearly the first and senior user of "Let's Encrypt" in relation to Internet security, including SSL/TLS certificates - both in terms of length of use and in terms of the widespread public association of that brand with our organization.
We urge Comodo to do the right thing and abandon its "Let's Encrypt" trademark applications so we can focus all of our energy on improving the Web.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Theory | Feedback | Top keywords: Encrypt^#1 Let's^#2 trademark^#3 Comodo^#4 We've^#5
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This bot is magic.
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I guess this is their Facebook page?
https://facebook.com/ComodoHome
Maybe they need a digital spanking?
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Sounds hot.
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You usually have to pay extra for that, Cotton.
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HEY! Why are you charging extra for that?
I was clearly the one who invented charging extra for it. I'm telling mummy.
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They should have just made a deal with Microsoft to drop LE from their latest Trusted Root Certs update in Windows. Then Microsoft is the bad guy (as usual) and Comodo is like..."Wut?" Too bad I just made the idea public. ;)
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IIRC LE is co-signed by another major CA.
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Yeah it was IdenTrust, their focus is on more than just SSLs though.
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I doubt Microsoft would ever do it considering who the corporate sponsors of Let's Encrypt are; Akamai, Mozilla, EFF, and Cisco. Also IIRC Chrome and Firefox use their own CA databases and not the one built into Windows, so this change would only affect Edge and IE.
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welp. Comodo just lost me as a long time customer. If you act like a douche your customers WILL notice.
Same here. Good bye, Comodo.
Yep, once mine expire I'm moving the rest to let's encrypt.
Why wait for the current ones to expire?
They cost money and i'm stubborn and want to get my dollars worth from those ass holes.
I really want to use Let's Encrypt, but as long as they ignore the Microsoft side of things (Azure in particular), I won't even give them the time of day. I'm aware there are work arounds, but the entire service is designed around this whole automation routine that they've made the simple manual act of accepting a CSR and returning the corresponding cert a practical nightmare.
Why couldn't they just implement an open CA that can receive and process CSRs like every other certificate authority on the net? Why require this elaborate command line tool that attempts to throw the kitchen sink in along with the cert?
Have you considered using a different acme client?
Yep. Bye Comodo.
Same here