From the Right to Fork dept.:
just a minute before the regular TWiki release meeting, the company TWIKI.NET announced unilaterally that the best for the TWiki.org project would be for them to take over governance. With it comes a complete lock down of the community site. From that minute on, all long-time contributors have lost access to their code. Counter-reaction: the community has left the building, leaving TWIKI.NET without a contributing community. Question: is it a sensible move for a venture capital firm that depends on a healthy Open Source community to lock it out?


Access to the site is only granted if contributors agree to a set of newly installed terms and conditions dictated by TWIKI.NET, a company founded by Peter Thoeny 12 months ago. His power to do so grows out of two sources: (a) he is the sole owner of the trademark on TWiki and (b) he is sponsoring the server hardware and thus had root access.

And now he has triggered the trademark gun and fired the TWiki community. He even repeatedly threatened people on the #twiki IRC channel that "[he has] been advised by one of [his] investors, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, that [they] need to protect [their] trademark". Clearly, their VC people have no picture of the situation other than their own return of investment. Sure, protecting a registered trademark is what it is all about. But threatening the community that has been working on TWiki on a volunteer basis for the recent 10 years that way is a bit strong. Too strong for the TWiki community.

wikiring.com