Over the years various people have said in different ways that I’m too girly to be a geek and too geeky to be a girl. However, I am both a geek and a girl – a geekgirl. And I’m merely one of the many geekgirls around the world.

Every single geekgirl is precious. In my opinion every single geekgirl should be made to feel welcome and included into our community.

We should be saying to each and every one:

“Welcome geekgirl, you’re here at last; we’ve been waiting for you”.

Instead in Australia, if you call yourself a geekgirl, you might experience a public rebuke (as I did not so long back) like this:

[Source: http://twitter.com/alexburns/statuses/8315283151 28 Jan 2010]

Or if you get excited on a public forum and want to gather the geekgirls together for sharing and growing the community you might be told this:

[Source: Women on Wave – public wave - https://wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+buzi-t_KC accessed at 28 May 2010]

All this is because a woman who was a pioneer who inspired many of us in the early days of the web says that she is the only geekgirl.

In fact Rosie registered a trademark for the word geekgirl in 1995. Since then, instead of welcoming all the new geekgirls who followed, she has defended ‘her’ word vigorously.

At first I was surprised and then angry at having someone telling me I couldn’t use the term geekgirl in casual conversation. So being a fan of civil action, I looked up Rosie’s trademark, found it to be limited to “Publication of electronic books, magazines and/or multimedia both online on a communications network and on recorded media including optical disks and magnetic media”, and I thought I could register a trademark outside that scope and then make the term freely available for everyone to use. I’ve now realised that this approach didn’t really communicate my intent.

I have never met Rosie nor communicated directly with her. I bear her no ill will or animosity. I do not presume to intuit her motivations in any of her actions.

It has been reported to me that Rosie is selling t-shirts with the word geekgirl on them – good on her! The more women in the world wandering around with that word emblazoned on their t-shirts the better. Perhaps she can launch out into other garments and knick-knacks too?

But I do call upon Rosie to set the geekgirls free to use these two plain English words that describe them – geeks who are girls.

There is a good model already existing in the open source community for trademarks to co-exist with community usage. A great example is Fedora – where they allow community usage of the word Fedora as outlined here:

“Noncommercial and community web sites
In the past, community members have inquired whether it is permissible to show support for Fedora by:
• placing the Fedora Trademarks on a personal web site or blog to support Fedora
• making a page on a social networking web service to support Fedora
• linking to Fedora from a wiki to provide information or show support for Fedora

The guidelines relating to such usage are set forth in this section.
It is permissible to use the Fedora Trademarks on websites to show your support for the Fedora Project, provided that:

• where possible, the design logo hyperlinks to the Fedora Project website, http://fedoraproject.org/, or if that is not possible, the site includes a prominent link to the Fedora Project website at http://fedoraproject.org/.
• the site indicates clearly that it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Fedora Project; in addition, where possible:
• the site must include the text “This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Fedora Project” prominently on any page that includes the Fedora Trademarks, and
• if the Fedora Trademarks appear in a page header or any area that is designed to be presented on more than one page, the notice must also be designed to be presented on all of those pages as well. (i.e., if the Fedora Trademarks appear in a site-wide header, the informational text must appear in that header or an identically site-wide footer.)
• the site does not use visual styling that could be confusing to viewers or visitors as to whether the site is hosted by or on behalf of the Fedora Project”
[Source: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#Noncommercial_and_community_eb_sites at 28 May 2010]

Come on Rosie, isn’t it time for you to set your geekgirl sisters free?